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 (168 page)

“What I’m doing is preserving it, Caleb, making sure there will be something for you and for me. But I don’t see you helping in any way.”

“I’ve tried to imagine why you did it.”

“This isn’t doing any good.”

“I know for you the house stands for something that was good once. But now you’re selling me for the house and—”

“Don’t, Caleb.”

“You’ve stolen from our mother. And you’re lying to yourself.”

“You would have nothing if I hadn’t stopped her. Nothing.”

“Isn’t that exactly what I have now? Nothing?”

“What do you know? Ever since
Vati
died, you have not been there for me or for the house. You’re never here. And when Stefan was a baby, I had to leave him with Mother or with tenants while I scraped and painted and cleaned and—”

“You could have hired others to do that.”

“And who would have paid those so-called others?”

“You’re reaching back awfully far to prove how you suffered.”

“It happened. It all happened. And I’m still the one who makes
sure Mother has a house to live in, the one who does her laundry, who gets the stains out of—”

“There’s no need for you to do her laundry. Send it out.”

“It’s too expensive … and impersonal.”

“You keep suffering so that you can justify cheating Mom out of the house. And you know what the sad thing about this is, Emma? That I’m not surprised.”

She felt furious. Furious that everyone was after what should have been hers. The
Wasserburg.
Justin. Her son. She was not about to let Caleb take the
Wasserburg
from her. The way he’d taken the pink bicycle with the training wheels that her mother had given her. It had never been fully hers, though she’d believed it was, riding it only on sidewalks, so careful to wipe off each speck of dirt while she’d waited for a dry, sunny day to take it on the path by the lake. But Caleb had ridden it without asking, had brought it home wet with dirt and leaves on its fenders and tires, had made it ugly so that she’d never been able to enjoy it again.

“I don’t deserve this,” she said.

“Emma—”

“No.” She slammed down the phone as rage from that long-ago day pitched through her, tilted her back to yet another day when Caleb had locked her out on the balcony with the copper taste of death on her teeth till she’d gouged her way through blood and glass into all that was sacred and safe.

The phone started ringing. She stepped away from it, breath heaving. And in that very instant she understood. Understood that she alone deserved the house. Understood that even though she had taken ownership for Caleb and herself, she was no longer willing to give him half.
Not now.
Not after he’d accused her of cheating him and her mother. Truth was that
Opa’s Wasserburg
belonged to her. Had always been meant to be hers. She had stripped her life bare working for it. It was all she had. And it was all she wanted. All she needed.

Periodically, that day, the phone rang, and she finally picked it up late that evening.

Caleb. Of course. Talking fast as if worried she’d hang up on
him again. “I want you to know that I checked with a lawyer about what I can do to make sure the house goes back to Mom.”

“Listen, I have a lot of things to do.”

“My lawyer said I would have to prove in court that Mom was incompetent when she deeded the house to you.”

“You’re bluffing.”

He didn’t answer.

“You are,” she said.

“I am planning to check with a lawyer.”

“So go and check.”

“At least put me on the deed too.”

“Now you want it?”

“For her. I would use it to take care of her.”

“I’m already taking care of her. Whatever she gets, Caleb, she spends. Faster than you can count it.”

“Then let her.”

“I can’t.”

“I thought your grand plan was to divide it all the way
Oma
should have, to Aunt Greta and Uncle Tobias and with Father’s share going to Mother.”

“I was twelve when
Oma
died.”

“But you knew instinctively what would have been right.”

“Can you imagine what kind of a legal mess that would turn into?”

“Not really. It’s still the best solution.”

“Why? You’ve checked that out too with your lawyer?”

“I’m sure it can be done.”

“I have to go.”

When she bought an answering machine to screen his calls, he sent her letters she didn’t answer.

“You will always be my sister,” he wrote.

“I want to believe that someday you’ll do what is just,” he wrote.

“If there’s ever anything I can do for you, I’ll be there,” he wrote.

It made her miss him, those letters—not the way he was now with his demands, but the joyfulness they used to carry be
tween them. And that was a great loss, especially if she added it to all she had already lost. Some evenings, late, she would dial his number and wait for him to answer, wait till he had hung up before she would set down her phone. Once, right afterwards when she still held the receiver, it rang in her hand, and she dropped it, afraid it would be Caleb. It kept ringing, and when she picked it up—suddenly sure it was her son calling from Justin’s house, though he hadn’t called her from there before—it indeed was Caleb.

“What is it?” she asked, sure he’d found out she was the one calling him nights and hanging up.

But what he said was, “I miss you.”

“Me too,” she said without thinking.

“We may never agree about the house, but I… All I want tonight is to talk with you, Emma. Nothing about the house.”

She leaned forward. “Yes.”

“I’m still ready to teach Stefan to shave.”

“Yes,” she said again. “I’m glad,” she said. “I think he’s started,” she said, suddenly worried that Caleb wouldn’t be on the phone long enough to hear all of it. “With shaving, I mean. Not here. But at his father’s house. He’s there a lot. With the boy who was born the same day. Oliver. Stefan has sort of a shadow on his upper lip. The way you used to. And along his jaw. Some days I don’t see that shadow and know he must have shaved. But he doesn’t talk about his father to me. Or about what he is doing there. And I don’t ask. At times I wonder if it’s better that way. For him.”

“And for you?”

“There’s so much I have to do here. …”

“And what does that give you?”

She was silent.

“Are you still there?”

“I think … he’s used to not needing me a whole lot. And that he wants a full family.”

“And what’s a full family?”

“A family that is together more than once a week.”

“Some of his distance from you may have to do with being almost fifteen.”

“And with me never being there for him … as much as I wanted to.”

They talked for over half an hour, mostly about Stefan, but also about Caleb’s work, about Uncle Tobias who was on a Mediterranean cruise with Danny Wilson, about Aunt Greta who was volunteering at a hospital in Boston. Neither of them mentioned the
Wasserburg.

Caleb thought that Emma sounded glad to be talking with him, and he felt good hearing that gladness in her voice; but gradually it began to bother him how she was leaning on him, counting on him as though she hadn’t cheated him and their mother. As his familiar anger seeped back—
you can’t have it both ways, Emma
—he could no longer trust himself to keep it from her. “I need to be somewhere soon,” he said abruptly. “I’m sorry, but I need to get ready.”

“Can’t we—”

“I really do, Emma.”

“Of course,” she said, confused by the sudden change in his voice. “Maybe we can … you know … talk again? Soon?”

But he was already gone.

All she had ever wanted was to have the house back the way it used to be. But now so much of it felt closed to her. As a child she had been a welcome visitor in all the apartments, following her
Opa
who’d been well-liked by his tenants; but now the turnover was swift, and new renters kept to themselves. Some didn’t greet her when they saw her, and a few left their trash bags on the floor of the utility room instead of opening the trap door and throwing them down the chute. Carelessness like that made her impatient because it always created extra work for those who had to pick up afterwards.

It seemed that the only way she could get into their lives was through their complaints, through clauses in their leases allowing her the inspection of any apartment, and through the mail she began to take from their boxes. It was easier than taking things from stores used to be, something she’d stopped when she was pregnant. A few of their personal letters she kept in her closet with
Oma’s
letters; but most she sealed and replaced because they were so shallow
in comparison. The last week of each month she would raid all mailboxes for bills. Those she didn’t need to open, just store until the tenants had paid their rent. It was only right that they should pay for shelter before considering other bills.

At times, when she would let herself wish that the
Wasserburg
were still a community, a family, it felt as though her grandparents’ festive dinners—summer solstice in the courtyard and Christmas in the lobby—had happened every Sunday, linking the years of her childhood; and within those memories, lit and embellished by longing, she would see her entire family:
Opa
and
Oma,
her parents, Aunt Greta, Uncle Tobias…. And the tenants, how they’d looked forward to the parties. They brought their families, flowers, tables from their apartments that Emma would help
Oma
cover with white linen. Those who played instruments—the guitar or flute or violin—performed while everyone sang along. While music and voices crisscrossed the courtyard,
Oma
moved from table to table with trays of food, wearing the emerald necklace she only wore when
Opa
reminded her. As Emma recalled how the colors of the food were often enough to satisfy her, she felt once again that certainty of belonging.

And that’s when she thought of giving a party.

A summer solstice dinner in the courtyard of the
Wasserburg.

To celebrate her ownership of the house.

To let the tenants see her generous side.

She was lavish in buying what she needed because this dinner would make up for some of her harshness with them, would show them how they all benefited from living in this house that was unlike any other. She bought thick, ivory note cards and a calligraphy pen. After placing her invitations in the tenants’ mailboxes, she wished she’d asked for responses to figure how much shopping she had to do. But the few who couldn’t come surely would let her know. This year it would be best to rent tables and chairs. Already she could see the tenants:
in their best clothes they pour through the lobby and out into the courtyard where tables with candles are set up. Some carry instruments or bottles of wine. She brings out platters of potato salad with parsley and radish curls, browned chickens with their feet in white paper lace. The tenants talk among
each other instead of barely nodding to each other in the elevator. They drink the punch she made just the way
Opa
used to: plain for the children, spiked for the grown-ups.

People from other buildings walk by and see the lights, hear the music, wonder what it would be like to live in the
Wasserburg.
By July the vacancy sign will have disappeared from the front window. For months after the solstice dinner, when tenants encounter her in the hallways, they’ll thank her instead of giving her their complaints or a mumbled hello. They invite her into their apartments, and she enters those rooms that have been closed to her for too many years, sits down—on their best chair, they insist, “For you, Miss Blau”—and looks from their windows at the views that are so different from every angle. By next summer the dinner will be a tradition, and the tenants will bring their own chairs and tables, help with the planning and the preparations.

But this year it would be her gift to them.

Her mother surprised her by wanting to help, and for the two days before the dinner, they cooked together, both almost giddy in the mood of getting ready for the party as they sliced fruits and cubed potatoes, baked strawberry pies and carved radish curls, sautéed onions and stuffed chickens with wild rice and chestnuts. They used both ovens and refrigerators. Face flushed, Emma hummed as she carried trays of food between her mother’s apartment and her own. When she came upon tenants on the stairs— since once again the elevator was broken—she gave them a mysterious smile that startled some and made others speculate that Miss Blau was probably about to raise the rents.