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 (165 page)

He never called to ask his mother when he was invited to eat dinner at Oliver’s house, because she’d only tell him she had already cooked for him. But his mother wouldn’t phone him there. He knew she wouldn’t. Still, he didn’t like thinking of her eating alone, and he made sure to stay home some evenings. He’d coax her into climbing to the roof and watching the stars with him. Or he’d help her clean out storage spaces or get vacant apartments ready for new tenants.

For a while he worried that Oliver’s mother would ask him questions about his mother, but she simply did not seem interested. A short woman with a generous laugh and hips wider than his mother’s, she wrote part-time for the local paper, covering town meetings and school events. She played a lot of tennis—singles in the town’s women’s league, mixed doubles with her husband. Though she enjoyed cooking, she wasn’t interested in housework and usually waited with doing laundry until everyone was out of clothes. Walking from room to room, she’d scoop up clothes, hunt
for stray socks beneath beds, and throw each armful down the steps into the basement, where for several hours the washer would chug, making the floor tremble as it spun out the water.

About once a month she’d attack her house with a mess of cleaning supplies, enlisting the help of Oliver and Patty, the youngest of her daughters, who was a senior in high school. While Oliver would slide dozens of jars and cans from one end of the counter to the other and Patty would give the floors a few distracted sweeps with the vacuum cleaner, Stefan would usually volunteer to wash dishes and scrub sinks.

“You don’t have to,” Oliver’s mother would tell him while strolling through the kitchen, arms full of newspapers that she’d stack in the garage.

“I don’t mind.” Suds to his elbows, Stefan would feel like a member of his father’s real family.

One Saturday morning when he arrived at the yellow Victorian, Stefan found his father at the kitchen table, folders spread around him. He glanced up from a page he’d covered with long letters that slanted to the left. “Stefan,” he said, his voice pleased. The open collar of his shirt framed a pale triangle of skin.

It was his first time alone with his father. In all their years of Wednesdays, they had never been alone in those brief hours between his father’s arrival and his own bedtime.
Maybe now. Maybe now he’ll say something to me.
Stefan didn’t know what—just that it would be about him and his father, and that it would be important.

“Oliver went to the library with his mother. You’re welcome to stay and wait for him.”

Ezra jumped up and down, jabbing his wide nose at Stefan, urging him to rub the creases of furry skin between his ears.

“That dog really likes you,” his father said.

Stefan wished his father had said how much
he
liked him. So far, the welcome he got from the dog was more enthusiastic than anything his father had said to him. Whenever he entered the house, Ezra would rise from his blankets and wag his entire
body, greeting him with the same eagerness he showed at feedings.

His father reached out to pat the dog. “And you have a new pal, Ezra, don’t you?”

“He doesn’t look nearly as ugly as the first day I saw him.”

His father laughed.

“I didn’t mean to insult him.”

“Ezra has that effect on people…. It’s always good to have you here, Stefan.”

“Really?” Warm with pleasure, Stefan waited for more.
If only you could be my father every day.

His father motioned to the chair across from him. “Would you like something to drink?”

“No, thank you.” Stefan sat down.

His father refilled his coffee and emptied two packets of sugar into his cup. “So—how’s everything going?”

“Good.”

“No problems?”

Stefan shook his head. Strange, how he missed his father when he was at home with his mother; yet, now that he finally was alone with him, he didn’t know what to say.

“And school?”

“All right.”

“You like your teachers?”

Though he felt his father waiting, willing to listen, all he could say was, “Yes.” He remembered the last day his father had come to the
Wasserburg.
Remembered that it had been snowing. Remembered waking crying to the sound of the plow the following morning and going outside with his mother to see how deep the snow was—to his knees. They’d built a snowman with a carrot nose, but he’d kept crying and his mother had suggested he take a carrot to school so the other kids would let him help if they made a snowman. All at once, Stefan wondered if it had been hard for his father to stay away. “Why didn’t you come back?” he blurted.

His father blinked. Glanced toward the door. “How is your mother?”

“The same.” Reaching for an empty sugar packet, Stefan tore it into small pieces. A few leftover grains of sugar stuck to his fingertips—
Why didn’t you come back to us? Why not?
—and he rubbed them against the fleshy pads at the base of his thumbs.

“You’re getting tall, Stefan.”

“I guess so.”

“What do you like to do after school?”

“I read a lot.”

“Good. Good. What else?”

“Stars … I watch stars. And I make charts.”

“Like your mother.” His father sounded disappointed.

Stefan lined the shreds of paper along the edge of the table in front of him. “I guess so.”

His father pushed another empty sugar packet across the table. “In case you need something else to pluck apart.”

Neck hot, Stefan scooped up the scraps of paper.

“I’m sorry. That was unnecessary. I’m always hoping. …”

“Hoping?”

“Well, yes … that you’ll be happier than this to see me.”

“Hey.” Oliver came running in, his mother behind him with a canvas bag full of books.

“But I am,”
Stefan wanted to shout.
“I am happy to see you.”
Yet when he looked at his father, he could already feel the moment between them lock, feel his father’s concern shift to Oliver, protecting Oliver from what Stefan knew. All at once he felt old—twice as old as Oliver—with the awareness that his father made him carry the knowledge that protected Oliver.

And who is there to protect me?

What used to feel like such a big thing—he and Oliver born the same day—now made him jealous, made him wonder if Oliver would ever figure it out.

“When did you get here?” Oliver wanted to know.

Stefan couldn’t speak. Felt Oliver’s mother step behind him and lay one hand against the back of his neck. Felt her breath light against his hair.

“I’m glad Oliver and you have become friends,” she said.

“Oliver is my best friend.” Thinking:
and my brother.
Knowing Laura Miles was thinking the same.
I want to live with them.
Instantly, he felt disloyal toward his mother.
Maybe I could visit her. But live with my father and Oliver.

“Stefan got here just a few minutes ago,” his father said to Oliver, and Stefan felt left behind, wishing he were the son who could evoke protectiveness in his father.

Third day of summer vacation, his father took him and Oliver fishing at Weirs Beach. Though they only caught small fish that they released into the lake, it didn’t matter to Stefan because, for a while there, standing on the pier between his father and Oliver, he was able to convince himself that he lived with them. And that was good … until he started feeling disloyal to his mother. She never mentioned his father. Or Oliver. Or anyone else in his father’s family. Just as his father’s family didn’t mention his mother. Sometimes Stefan felt he was the only one who remembered that there even were two families, and that—by shuttling between them—he linked them, though they continued to ignore all knowledge of each other. But whenever he thought about that too much, he’d start feeling odd—invisible and powerful at once.

His mother continued cooking for him, kept his dinners warm in the oven, though he wasn’t home to eat them.
“What can I do to bring you back?”
she pictured herself asking Stefan. But she couldn’t ask. After a while, she began to buy smaller portions and cook only for herself: chicken legs instead of whole chickens; one small pork chop instead of three; individual-size cans of vegetables and soups.

The Monday Stefan turned thirteen, she suggested pizza and a movie to celebrate. He hesitated, then admitted that Oliver’s mother had baked two cakes. “For our birthdays together. Oliver’s and mine.”

“You can pick another evening for pizza and a movie,” Emma said, smiling hard to keep him from seeing how close she was to crying.

“It’s more important to him … really.”

“We’ll do it another time. Any evening.”

“If you want, I’ll come to the movies with you tonight.”

“Go. Enjoy yourself.”

After he was gone, she heated a bowl of clam chowder for herself and carried it into the living room without switching on a lamp. It was raining, and what little light filtered through the windows smudged the walls and blurred the colors left in the length of peacock rug she’d moved in front of the sofa. She set down her bowl. Slipped into her raincoat. Walked through the darkening streets of Winnipesaukee, her hair wet and cold against her neck. It wasn’t until she saw the light in the downstairs windows of the yellow Victorian that she realized she was standing in front of Justin’s house.

Instinctively, she took a step closer toward her son who was there beyond that window, the left side of his face toward her as he raised a fork to his mouth. What if he looked out and saw her? She didn’t want him to feel sorry for her, didn’t want to embarrass him. Quickly, she crossed the street and hid behind the maple tree, the bark of its wide trunk familiar against the side of her face. Long splinters of moon fell at her through its bare branches as she watched her son. Birthday candles on the table in front of him. And around that table Justin’s other family.
Celebrating the day I gave birth to Stefan. Mine. I want my son back, want him back, now.
All at once, she remembered how closely Justin used to listen to Stefan when he was a small boy, and for that instant she tried to believe that it was good for him to be here with his father. Yet, already, she wanted to caution him that his father would never give him enough of himself. That he was a kind but indifferent man. That to expect any more of him would only bring Stefan pain.

Drawing her coat closer around herself, Emma shivered as she recalled how
not
being with Justin had often given her more pleasure than having him with her. In her longing for him, she had felt lovely and high-breasted. But as soon as he’d arrived, she’d felt rushed, trying to fill their one afternoon with all she wanted to have
with him—while he was unhurried as though they had unlimited time together. Already disappointed, though he hadn’t left yet, she dreaded his departure; but as soon as she was alone once again, she began looking forward to their next meeting when the possibility of anything would be hers.
Except it never became more than a possibility.

Some days her love for him had felt impetuous, ready to risk anything, though he hadn’t expected risks from her. That last night with him three years ago—the night of their only fight—he had told her he was afraid. “Because I have nailed down everything so securely in my life, Emma. Because you’re the one person who could tear it all wide open.”

And I still could. Tear it all wide open and walk in there and claim my place at your table. Celebrate the day I gave birth to Stefan. Mine. I want my son back, want him back, now.
Her wet hands stiffened into fists, and when she pushed them into her pockets, she felt her knuckles against her thighs. How restricted she had always felt in how much caring she could show Justin. “We have to take this slowly,” he had warned her, and when she’d asked, “How slowly can you take anything when you have a child together?” he hadn’t answered.

And now their child was spending more time with him than with her.

In the yellow window, Justin’s wife leaned toward Stefan.
Let him be—you already have four of your own.
But Stefan let her touch his shoulder, this woman who had let him nudge his way into his father’s house where his mother could not go and had never been, into his father’s family that was a family every day, not just on Wednesdays. Emma wished she could carry Stefan home and keep him there. Wished she could get rid of Justin inside her head. And of all that belonged to him. Eyes stinging, she started off into a lopsided run and didn’t stop until she reached the
Wasserburg.