Margot's War

by Ty Knoy

  Gayle laughed, perhaps for the first time on the trip. “And how did you know this?”

  Nick laughed also, happy that some ice had broken. “Molly, Victor’s mother, told me she and my mother played together a lot. She was over at our house a lot, and we often were over there when I was young. All the while I was in the womb, I was inches from her Steinway’s sounding board, several hours every day. Almost every piece of classical and Romantic piano music was imprinted in me, from embryo on. It had been the same for my sister, of course, but it affected her oppositely. She’s all for folk and pop music.”

  Nick and his father were in his study, a wall away from Nick’s mother and Gayle, whose ambitions for New York and Milan had been mentioned. “She has a fine voice, and she’s quite good with it,” Mr. Rohloffsen said. “You needn’t worry, Nick. In case you are worrying, that is. She’ll follow you home. She may think she wants her name in lights, but deep down is the overriding urge to continue to overpopulate the planet.”

  Nick’s father—he had been a lineman—wasn’t really a Neanderthal. Nick knew that very well. But his way was a parody of a Neanderthal (a parody of himself, some said). He also had a conversational style that involved handing off wisdom by wrapping it in a joke, or as it was in this case, making a probe wrapped as a joke.

  “Maybe Gayle’s an exception,” Nick said. “And anyway, she hasn’t asked me to marry her.”

  His father smiled. “It looks like she won’t have to.”

  Nick had never been taken prisoner by romance. He’d had a crush on a girl only once, but he had fought it off, determined to first become a success. He hadn’t represented his relationship with Gayle as anything other than an interest in a musical talent. His notion of romance was that it would make itself known in a cataclysmic way, as it had for Rochester when he crashed his horse as his eyes first met those of Jane Eyre. As Nick sat with his father that day, he was aware that the same had now happened to him, but he kept it to himself.

  Or so he believed.

  Mr. Rohloffsen hadn’t let go of anything either. His wife, on the other hand, was barely able to contain herself. She had ordered out lunch from her caterer and had it placed on the deck overlooking Lake Michigan. The white wrought-iron table with the glass top, usually set with placemats, was for this occasion covered by a linen cloth and had a centerpiece of squash and mums.

  Nick was thankful that at least she hadn’t ordered balloons.

  Whatever he understood about females and their ambitions, Mr. Rohloffsen did know what he was listening to when it came to music. He had been born with perfect pitch, something his great-uncle—but apparently no one else back in the family—was said to have possessed. Despite his head having been batted around inside football helmets, the gift had stayed put. He had never used it for any purpose other than to impress and woo Mrs. Rohloffsen—before she became Mrs. Rohloffsen—at a music camp many years before. He was a serious, captivated listener, and tears came easily to his eyes for certain well-done melodies. In fact, Gayle had put that look on his face with a Richard Strauss piece she and his wife were working on.

  In Gayle, Nick could tell that he and his father were hearing the same thing. It was important for Nick; he needed to verify that he wasn’t deluding himself.

  After a half hour in the study, talking and listening through the walls, the two men rose. “Very nice, ladies,” Mr. Rohloffsen said as they passed through the music room. He only ever gave heart-felt compliments.

  At the music stand, Nick planted a kiss on Gayle’s cheek. Not one for displays of affection in front of others, Gayle stiffened and shot a glance at Nick’s father and then Nick’s mother. “You are terrific,” Nick whispered in her ear. “That’s just a congratulatory kiss, like Ed Sullivan kissing Rosemary Clooney.”

  Nick’s father raised an eyebrow but also smiled on the side of his face toward Nick, away from Gayle. Nick’s mother, who had been giddy at lunch, held herself to a smile.

  Nick went through the screen doorway, onto the deck, and into the October sun. The neighbors, whose house was on the next dune, waved. They often sat out when Nick’s mother had strings or vocalists or ensembles for practices with doors open. They said something, and though the wind was light, it was against them, so Nick couldn’t make it out.

  “A girl from school!” he called.

  The wind was with him, and they clapped. He thought maybe it was because Gayle sang well or maybe simply because she was a girl.

  Out on the lake were whitecaps and two fishing boats near the horizon. Nick picked up his father’s binoculars from a side table and looked but saw no sails. It was late in the season, and the weather was changing. Gulls circled above and around one of the fishing boats, diving for perch heads and entrails that had washed over the side. On rare days, one could see the Chicago skyline sixty miles away—not directly, but reflected in the atmosphere—but not on this day.

  Pieces of melon were still out. Nick took one and finished it before his father came through the screen doorway. Mr. Rohloffsen sat, poured a glass of tea, and offered it, but Nick waved it away with a “no thanks” and leaned back. His mother and Gayle started up again.

  After a few sips, Nick’s father asked, “Have you told Miss Maarling what you’re going to do?”

  Nick was taken aback. “If you mean about the army, she’ll be okay with it.” He hadn’t told his father how he had arrived at his decision or that Gayle had sealed his decision with a kiss. “Wasn’t Mom proud of you when you were in the army?”

  “She wasn’t very cheerful when I was trying to get into the air corps, but she brightened up when it became apparent that I wouldn’t be going into harm’s way.”

  “Not much going on now that could harm me,” Nick said.

  “That can change quickly. Anyway, if she’s going to be okay with it, don’t you think you may as well make her okay with it right now?”

  Nick shrugged.

  “Listen, Nick. Don’t wait. She’s less likely to slip through your fingers—in case you’re worried about that—if you tell her now. What you do not want, come Christmas, is to have to say to her, ‘Okay, so we’re in love, and by the way, I’m going to be gone for a couple of years.’”

  “I know.”

  “Omissions and failures to disclose are deceptions. Females have leeway with that. Men don’t.”

  Nick laughed. A cocky, smart-alecky mood had come home with him that day, the first time he had been home since before he and Gayle had been caught in the rain, talking about going to Detroit. “I guess that’s why they don’t have to tell us if they wear padded bras.” Though he had never been reluctant to discuss female curvature with peers, this was the first time he had introduced the topic to his father, and his father had never introduced the topic to him. They sat silently for a while, listening, until Gayle and Mrs. Rohloffsen came to the end of a song.

  “Gayle and I are in a contract,” Nick said when the final note had died. His father was big on contracts—formal and informal—firm on the notion that people should always keep their word. “She’s a very earnest student; she’s not at college for any reason other than study. She works very long and hard in her studies and her coaching. In order that we both get the most out of our instruction, she and I have agreed not to distract each other.”

  “Oh?”

  “In a romantic way. At least not until the term ends.”

  “Oh?” Mr. Rohloffsen said again. “And at the end of the term, what then?”

  Nick shrugged again. “We haven’t had a real discussion, but we’ve sort of agreed that we won’t get in bed with each other or get married until I’m back out. That’s sort of a contract. Gayle’s big on contracts. Some of her contracts are with her parents, and there’s this one with me, but some are with herself. Like, if she gets ninety on a test, she buys herself a chocolate bar, and if she gets a ninety-five, a five-ounce choco
late bar.”

  “I’ll keep my fingers crossed,” Mr. Rohloffsen said, lifting his hands off his lap as he crossed the fingers. “Morally upright girls sometimes break down when their men are going off to war, so watch it.”

  “I’ll watch it.”

  “Your buddy, Ron Phillips, from high school?”

  “Yes.”

  “Ever wonder why his name is Phillips and his mother and father are named Gregory?”

  “Her first husband was named Phillips?”

  “No, Dorothy had no first husband. She was a fine girl from an upstanding church family and was in love with Edward Phillips. Ed worked for us, but in 1942 he enlisted, came home on leave for a few days after basic training, and then was off to North Africa to meet up with Rommel and the Afrika Korps. Dorothy worked for us also, and it became obvious that she was pregnant. Ed was killed before Ron was born. John Gregory, who had always wanted to marry Dorothy anyway, did so about four years later when he got back from the war, and he adopted Ron. But he had Ron keep Ed’s name. He and Ed had been school friends.”

  “I see,” Nick said. “I didn’t know that.”

  “It happens,” Mr. Rohloffsen said.

  “Gayle and I have acknowledged that we—both of us—almost more than anything else in our worlds, want to go to bed with each other. We’ve discussed it openly.”

  Seldom had Nick seen his father’s breath taken away, but with that, Mr. Rohloffsen sat back in his chair and frowned as he shot a glance through the screen toward the prospective diva. “Well, that’s candor,” he said.

  “It’s a whole new world out there, Dad, but we haven’t done it. Not till we’re through school. Very rational, don’t you think?”

  “I’ll believe that when I see it—or don’t see it, I guess. Two years is a long time. Do me a favor. Make sure I never know one way or the other.”

  “Okay, Dad. It’s a deal.”

  “You’re definitely distracted, my boy.” Mr. Rohloffsen reached for a pitcher on the table. “Here, why don’t you have some tea?” He picked up a glass and held both out toward Nick. “You can get out of that draft call, you know.”

  “I know, but I have to go through with it now.” Nick glanced through the screen at Gayle, but didn’t explain. “I need a trip into the real world anyway, a break in tempo.”

  Nick’s tongue had begun to fly; words came out of him concisely, clearly, and rapidly, as though he were in a séance, which he’d seen in the movies. Never had any talk of this nature gone on between his father and him. He was doing all the talking, but his father’s winces were pushing the gates farther open. “She is beautiful, but she can be nasty, mostly only when she thinks her goals are being threatened.” Nick poured some tea and took two swallows.

  “You, yourself are a threat,” Mr. Rohloffsen said. “Of course, you must know that. She looks pleasant enough, but I’m seeing her only on her best behavior, I’m sure.”

  “She’s meaner than hell in a way. A tease. A well-equipped tease—obviously—who keeps jerking the rug out from under me. You know what I mean?”

  “Actually, I don’t. Maybe she’s scaring herself.”

  Nick glanced at Gayle again through the glass, but she still wasn’t looking his way. “The big problem, assuming she agreed to check in to the Union or the Bell Tower Hotel with me, is that her dreams might end up on the curb. Do I want that? I think she would be a different person if that were to happen. She’d change into someone I haven’t met. Do you think that’s right?”

  “It’s the call of motherhood. She both wants it and is afraid of it. I’d say she both wants you and is afraid of what it would mean to have you. And yes, she would change. She wouldn’t know it, but you would.”

  Nick seemed to have arrived at a seminal conclusion: he was talking to the wrong person. His father was inexpert. Nick always had presumed, without ever having considered otherwise, that music camps in 1936 locked up their girls in the night, and so his parents’ dalliance there had been platonic. Though they had been in high schools two large states apart, they had held onto each other with letters, a few phone calls, and only two visits over the winter. Then they had married right out of high school when both were barely eighteen. “I guess you don’t really have any good advice for me here,” Nick said.

  His father affirmed the epiphany. “I have limited experience. With your mother, I knew when I touched her, just on the arm. It was like a light had just been plugged in. She felt it too, she said. I mean, she didn’t say it right then, but we talked about it later, and that’s what she said. I’m not suggesting that you should wait for touch to make itself known,” Mr. Rohloffsen added. “Other clues, other signs are available, or so I’ve read in novels. And I’m sure they vary—from case to case, I mean.”

  Inside, Gayle and Nick’s mother were working on “I Waited for the Lord,” which Gayle was to sing at church the next day. She had been humming it, singing it lightly, music in her lap as they were driving over.

  “She’d look good in our family trophy case,” Mr. Rohloffsen said.

  Nick frowned.

  “That’s a joke, son. All I know about her is that she’s talented and good-looking, but there’s still plenty left for you to figure out.”

  Nick rocked for a moment or so.

  “And also for her to figure out you, I might add,” Mr. Rohloffsen said.

  “Dad, you’re right. I’ll tell her tomorrow. I’ll call you tomorrow and tell you after it’s done.”

  Mr. Rohloffsen nodded. “It’s best, no matter where it goes. Honesty is best.”

  They listened to the music coming from inside and looked out onto the lake at the clouds forming. At the end of the song, Nick said, “We’ll need to be going soon, or that rain will catch up with us.”

  “Are you in a convertible? With no top?”

  “I just don’t want to drive Gayle in the rain. She’s singing that Mendelssohn in the morning. I need to keep her from getting nerved-up. She’s kind of high-strung—nervous about big truck wheels in the lane beside her. This is the first time I’ve ever had her in a car, and I’m sure that wheels throwing spray would be bad for her.”

  Gayle came onto the deck. She had packed up her music, and she held the folder to her breast, both arms folded across. The edges fluttered. Grains of sand had begun pelting them. Out on the lake, waves had begun to foam into bigger whitecaps, and the fishing boats were headed in. Nick and Gayle went to the balustrade together and looked out as her hair flew around her shoulders and face.

  “Thanks for bringing me, Nick,” Gayle whispered. “Like you said, she’s world-class. I wish she were accompanying me tomorrow.”

  “She could have been a world-class soloist with a touring career, but look what happened. She ended up in this beach house with diamonds and minks, but playing her Steinway to the seagulls.”

  “Worse things could have happened,” Gayle laughed. “And anyway, had she not ended up here, we wouldn’t have you.”

  “Right. But then I wouldn’t have known the difference.”

  Nick’s mother came out, and Gayle said, “Thank you, Mr. and Mrs. Rohloffsen, for the lovely lunch. You have a gorgeous home.”

  She and Nick’s mother embraced, and Gayle offered her hand to his father.

  “Victor’s parents’ house is the fourth one down,” Nick said, pointing down the beach. “You can see it if you lean out a bit.” The grandiose house—a mansion, really—sat in woods in high dunes. “Victor grew up there, at least until he went off to boarding school. His mother and father still live there now and then.”

  “And in Switzerland and in Colorado,” Mr. Rohloffsen said.

  “Now, now, dear, don’t start in,” Nick’s mother said. “There may be tender ears.” She turned to Gayle and smiled. “And it’s only an apartment in Geneva, not a house. She’s in Geneva now, in fact. Otherwise we c
ould have had her over today. You would like her. She knows a few things too, of course. Pardon me if I’m being presumptuous, but maybe next time.”

  It was an awkward moment, but they got past it.

  As they headed back through the house, toward the front door, the women chatted as Nick and his father shuffled behind. Once outside, Nick said, “What if she’s too tough, and I have to follow her to New York and Milan?”

  “I’d be disappointed not to have you around, but those are interesting places, so I’d be happy for you.” A few steps on, he continued, “You were an interesting little kid, you know. And now you’re an interesting young man. When you were in kindergarten and first grade, bigger girls—like your older girl cousins and their friends—were always getting ahold of you, picking you up, setting you on their laps, chasing you around, tickling you. They couldn’t leave you alone. At family reunions, they’d pass you around from one to the other.”

  “Elaine was the ringleader of that stuff at the Grand Hotel,” Nick said. “Victor had a fiancée with him. Remember her?”

  “I do,” Nick’s father said. “A young pianist, of course, and very good. But if she was a fiancée, I was never informed. She played for us one night in a ballroom.”

  “I don’t remember that,” Nick said.

  “It was probably after you were put to bed. She and Victor had come in from France and were on their way to the music camp. She was to be one of the instructors, as I understood it.”

  “She rescued me from the girls,” Nick said. “I think I may have started to cry, and she cuddled me. I may have fallen in love with her. There was that touch that you talked about just now. She felt good. Really good. But then, I was only five.”

  “It’s a good feeling.”

  “Maybe the way Mom’s touch felt to you.”

  “Still feels to me, Sonny.”

  “But then Victor didn’t marry her?”

  “He never married anyone.” Mr. Rohloffsen paused, as if thinking about the thing he was about to say. “Victor was—is—just waiting around for me to die so he can marry your mother.”