by Belva Plain
Caroline, almost afraid to touch the subject, could not help but ask how soon they would know.
“The biopsy? It can be rushed through. When I get back tonight, I’m sure we’ll know.”
Bravely, Lore was going about the fateful visit, adjusting her hat and pulling on her gloves. Her clothes, provided by Mama, were stylish enough, and yet she was dowdy, her lipstick too bright and her stockings the wrong color. She was awkward. And as always, Caroline thought: Lore doesn’t deserve what life has given, or failed to give her. And surely she doesn’t deserve what’s happening to her now.
Her eyes were starting to fill, so she turned away, murmuring, “I wish you would let me go with you.”
“No reason to. You stay here and relax, if you can. By the way, Joel went out early to see that Italian baker about a job. If he should come back, there’s stuff for a sandwich in the meat drawer. Well, I’ll go down and wait in front of the house.”
A sandwich. She makes it sound like a wifely responsibility for me. But I am not a wife. This is not a family. This is an insane dream.
Now there was the whole long day to be gotten through with nothing to do and nothing to think of except negatives. She stood at the window until Lore had driven away. Then she went to the shelf and chose a book that seemed interesting, but finding no interest in it, put it back. Clearly she was in no mood for books. She was a clock that has run down. No, she was a clock whose gears have gone berserk, so that it keeps striking the hour long after the hour has passed.
She took a hat from the closet. Then, remembering that it was autumn and one didn’t wear a straw hat whatever the weather, she replaced it. With a brown felt hat on her head—not the dark blue because in the autumn one never wore navy blue—she went downstairs and out into the street.
There was no one in sight except a horse-drawn milk wagon at the corner. Children were in school, women were doing their housework, and men were at their jobs. She ought to think about finding a job, although she had no idea what she was fitted for or what the town offered. The best way to find out, then, was to look for herself.
It did not take very long, merely a tour of Main Street, both sides, to see that Ivy was not bustling. In the drugstore, where she bought a pocket comb and toothpaste, she got into conversation with the man behind the counter. No, there were very few jobs for a woman in Ivy, just now and then in a shop for ladies. And women who had such jobs held on to them. Jobs in the farm machinery factory or the fertilizer plant outside town were, naturally, for men.
Caroline walked on through the uninspiring streets, past the bank, the three churches and two schools. At the war memorial, she stopped, read all the names, and was sad. She felt empathy. These were farm boys, small-town boys, who had possibly not even traveled as far as Buffalo, but had been sent across the ocean to places they had never seen, to die there. And she lingered, senselessly reading their names again and again.
After a while, she turned back toward the place where she now lived. Yesterday’s awful panic, that awful sense of unreality, swept over her once more. She was terrified that she might faint or cry out some crazy plea for help here on the public street.
On a bench outside of a hardware store, she sat down to take control of herself until the feeling should ebb. People passed, average people, hardly distinguishable from each other. Then a large, pregnant woman lumbered by, carrying a new life, a new citizen for Ivy, U.S.A. The new life that I am bringing to this place, she thought, was conceived in Switzerland by the son of an arrogant, crop-headed bully in Berlin. A bitter little smile broke out on her lips at the thought of that man’s outrage if he could know where his seed was to take root.
When she returned to Sycamore Street, Gertrude hailed her from the front porch. “Come join me. I’m going to bring out some cake and a pot of coffee to wash it down. I can’t keep away from fattening sweets, and I don’t even try anymore. What’s the use? I have no man to admire me.” She laughed. “Come on. Take the rocker. You’d better enjoy these last warm days because you won’t have a chance to sit outdoors again until next May, if then. Anyway, I want to hear all about you.”
No doubt she did want to hear. It was only natural. Besides, she looked like a woman who would love a “good gossip.” And Caroline prepared herself.
“Oh, I have something to tell you first. While you were gone, your husband came back to change out of his suit and put on working clothes. He got the job at Ricci’s. I had a hunch he might. Anthony’s getting older, his son’s gone into the army. He didn’t like helping in the bakery, anyway. So your husband’s come along at just the right time.”
“That’s nice,” Caroline said.
Greater enthusiasm had been expected.
“Nice! I should say so. In hard times like these, with not much English and just off the boat, he’s very lucky.”
“Oh, yes. But his English is improving fast. I have been teaching him and Lore.”
“Where did you learn to speak it so well? You sound like an Englishwoman, like Churchill on the radio.”
It had not been too difficult to tell the unadulterated truth to the Sandlers, but the sudden purposeful curiosity on this face that otherwise reminded her of a fish warned Caroline against telling too much.
“In school. We had a British teacher.”
“But Joel—you don’t mind if I call your husband Joel?—must have gone to a different school.”
“In different cities. Your cake is delicious.”
“Glad you like it. Help yourself. So you met while you were in Europe?”
“No, we met here.” The refugee committee must have told them so. But what about the date of the marriage? Either Lore or Joel might have said something quite different. They must work out a consistent story together, and do it tonight. Meanwhile, cornered as she was, the best thing for her to do was to finish the cup of coffee and go upstairs.
“He left Europe a little earlier than I did. We met here, and that’s the whole story,” she said, hoping to put an end to it.
“So it was love at first sight.”
Caroline returned a modest smile.
“And you’re going to have an American baby. Funny, the last tenants I had were also expecting. That is, their daughter was. An unmarried girl, a runaround. I felt so sorry for the parents. They were decent people. Some people around here blamed them, but that’s ridiculous. It was the girl’s own fault and nobody else’s. Don’t you agree?”
“Oh, yes,” Caroline said.
Gertrude’s rocker creaked back and forth to the singsong rhythm of her remarks. “Yes, it’s nice to see a respectable couple with their lives still ahead of them, and a new job coming right in time.”
“Yes, right in time.”
“Joel said Anthony showed him how to bake an Italian bread, and he copied it perfectly. People around here have taken a liking to Italian food. It’s a change.”
Caroline agreed that it was a very nice change.
Now it was Gertrude who switched the subject. “Emmy told us that your parents are still over there. I have some distant relatives over there, too. I don’t close my eyes any night without thinking of them. But I don’t feel too defeated. I’m confident that they will get out, and you must keep confidence, too.”
“I try.” And Caroline, avoiding those penetrating eyes, turned her head toward the weedy grass where two squirrels chased each other.
“Your father’s a doctor, they tell me?”
Why are you asking me, when you already know the answer?
“Yes, he is.”
“It’ll be wonderful for you when your parents arrive and find you with a new, steady husband, a good, young, working man like Joel.”
Why don’t you come right out and ask me what I’m doing married to a baker? As if I don’t know what you mean, as if we don’t all know that social classes do exist.
“Lore and I are both trying not to worry too much, but it’s very hard.”
“Lore’s a nice person. She’s
not your real sister, I hear.”
“To me, she’s real.”
“Oh, of course. She’s adopted, I meant. What’s nice is that even though she’s not Jewish, she’s not at all anti-Semitic. In these times especially, I mean.”
Caroline’s head began to throb, and she did not answer.
“Well, as you say, she’s your sister. But adoptions don’t always work out that well. Take my Victorine. I’ve had her since she was three. I took her in when there was nobody else to take her. I had never had children—had a hysterectomy when I was in my thirties. It wasn’t easy, I can tell you. She’s a moody girl, a real handful. Doesn’t know the meaning of the word gratitude. And she’s not doing as well as she should in school, either.” Gertrude sighed, and the rocker gave a shrill creak, as though it were breaking apart. “Listen, I have a thought. Do you happen to know any French?”
“Why yes, I speak French.”
“Maybe you could help her so she won’t fail it this year. I would deduct the charge from the rent.”
Poor Victorine! Moody, was she, living with this substitute for a mother? It was in Caroline’s head to say at once that she would do it for nothing. But then the thought came that this could be a small contribution to expenses.
“I’ll be glad to teach Vicky.”
Gertrude nodded. Then something else came to her mind. “Is there anything wrong with Lore? Vicky heard Emmy Schulman say she was going to see a doctor in Buffalo.”
“We hope there is nothing wrong with her,” Caroline said, hearing the veiled rebuke in her own voice.
It was fortunate that a few loud spatters of rain came down just then, giving her an excuse to go inside. “Oh, I think I kept the windows open. I’d better run. Thanks for the coffee.”
Once alone, she tried a book again, but still unable to fix her mind on anything impersonal, lay down instead. It’s not my body that’s tired, she thought, only my mind. Yet one could hardly separate the two.
The monotonous rush of increasing rain was restful. Closing her eyes, she tried to transport herself out of the present, forcing her mind to wander back through pleasant years before trouble had come: to a mountain village where horse-drawn sleighs jingled through the white streets, or to an Italian garden on the side of a cliff above the sea, or—
She was jarred awake by the sound of footsteps on the wooden stairs. Her heart jumped. It was already dark, late evening. In a moment the bedroom door would open and Lore would come in to tell her whether the news was bad, very bad, or too bad even to talk about. Her heart hammered.
But no, it was only Joel, treading heavily into the kitchen. Really, she ought to get up and say something to him about his new job. It would be only decent. She had not been alone with him for a single minute since that monstrous, dishonest ceremony that had “united” them. Inevitably, they would have to face each other. Lore couldn’t be present every single second, after all. The odd thing was that she had been able to talk to him quite naturally before that ceremony, and was now hardly able to look at him.
Could it perhaps be the same for him? He conversed so well with Lore. On the train coming here they had sat together for a while and talked with animation, as if they two were the newly wedded couple. One could almost laugh about it if it weren’t so awful and so tragic.
All of a sudden there were more steps, and then loud voices, Lore’s and a man’s, no doubt the doctor’s. He had come to explain the diagnosis, to soften the blow with generalities, as doctors do, as Dr. Schmidt had done on that evil night in Switzerland a thousand years ago.
She leaped from the bed and opened the door just as they came in from the outer hall.
“Idiots!” Schulman bellowed. “The idiot in New York who made that diagnosis ought to be shot. Cancer, my foot. We waited for the biopsy, that’s why we’re late, and the whole thing comes down to a viral infection of the parotid, the salivary glands.”
“That’s not dangerous?” asked Caroline.
“No, no. It just swells up. It’s nothing. Dr. Wolf was just about flabbergasted. He knew right away without the biopsy. A first-year student would know better, he said.”
Relief like a warm shower poured from Caroline’s head down to her feet. She stared at Lore, whose whole face had crinkled into a smile.
“And you’re really all right? There’s nothing wrong with you at all?”
“Nothing at all. Can you believe it?”
“Oh, God, I’m so glad for you. So glad! You can’t know.”
The two women hugged each other, laughing and crying, while the two men grumbled together over the strain and dread that the women had so needlessly been suffering.
“How could anyone have made such a careless diagnosis?”
The doctor shrugged. “Thank God it doesn’t happen more often. Anyway, Miss Lore, you’re out of the woods. So settle down, you people, and rest. If anybody needed rest, you do.”
IN the larger room there was a tiny desk at which Lore wrote in her interminable diary while Caroline lay against the pillows. She was full of thoughts. The peaceful rain had turned into a downpour, and the sound was curiously gloomy. Anyway, the evening’s first rejoicing had begun to dwindle.
Lore is heartier than I am by far, she said to herself. Now, in her third month, her waist was just starting to thicken. No one could see it, but she could feel it. And as she lay there, moving her hand over her changing body, a peculiar anger began to take shape.
It was fear and pity for Lore that had brought her to this miserable place and this miserable hour. Now in her line of sight stood the narrow closet where hung the dress that she had worn at her so-called wedding. It must be given or thrown away in the morning, out of sight and mind. What insanity had possessed her? It had all been unnecessary, the result of a dentist’s stupid mistake. Arid without planning them, words fell from her mouth.
“Why did you make me do this, Lore?”
Lore laid down the pen and turned in the chair. “I made you?” she repeated.
Caroline held up her left hand. “You know I didn’t want this damn fool ring.”
“Don’t blame it on me.” Lore spoke calmly. “It had nothing to do with me.”
“It most certainly did. Now that we’re here, and you’re well, we could manage without—without him. After the baby comes, I would go to work somewhere. I’d find something. And the two of us would manage. It all hinged upon your being well.”
“Oh, yes? Do you really think we would be welcome here without Joel? Miss Caroline Hartzinger, unmarried mother. Imagine what it would be like. Imagine.”
Then Caroline was struck into silence. She had only to think of Gertrude this very afternoon.
“Be fair to me. I wasn’t exactly happy about this make-believe marriage. Believe me, I wasn’t. But it did—does—seem to be a solution, and not too crazy at that.”
Caroline burst into tears, her brief anger defeated. “It’s only that I don’t know how long I’ll hold up. I try, but I’m sick inside. Don’t you see that I’m sick?” She sobbed. “I don’t know whether I’ll ever see Father and Mama again. Oh, could you have dreamed when we lived at home that we could ever be in a place like this?”
Lore laid her hands on Caroline’s head. Her strong hands soothed the tension in her neck and stroked her back. Her voice soothed, as always.
“You’ve done the right thing, Caroline, for yourself and for the baby. It didn’t ask to come here, darling. And who can ever foretell what will happen? Exactly as we didn’t foretell anything, including Hitler, or Walter, or anything at all. Let’s just get on our feet. Let the rest of the future unfold itself. And I’m here. I’ll take care of you. I’ll take care of everything.”
AN early fall brought a foretaste of winter. One day a fine snow blew in on the north wind, coated the last brown brittle leaves, then blew away, leaving a promise of prompt return. Great waves surged across the arctic expanse of the lake, as Caroline, a lonely figure in the early morning, stood unmoving, feeling the lo
neliness. She had extended her morning walks to the lakefront, where across the road stood the residences of people prominent in the town. Her doctor was one of them.
“I thought I recognized you walking on the lakefront the other morning,” he said. “Was it you wearing a red coat?”
It had been she wearing the coat that was bought in Switzerland to wear in America with Walter. He had liked red.
“So you’re getting your exercise. That’s good. Do you always walk by yourself?”
“I like being alone.”
He looked at her. Having listened often to Father’s observations, Caroline understood that he had recognized her melancholy. Or, might you not say instead, her despair?
He said then, “I know you have things on your mind, your family abroad. I’m sure it’s very hard for you right now, especially when you should be purely happy about your baby.”
He would be shocked, this respectable gentleman, if he knew how much I do not want this baby, how I dread the day.
“The best antidote for worry, as you probably know, is to keep busy and to be with people.”
“I do that. I give French lessons in the afternoons.”
Vicky had found two friends who also needed a tutor. Caroline was grateful for those hours that could take her briefly away from Ivy and back to a France that in her imagination now seemed to have been eternally filled with flowers.
“You make it sound so beautiful,” Vicky had cried, who was not “difficult” at all, just terribly unhappy.
The doctor approved. “Good. Keep busy. And before you know it, you’ll have something else to keep you busier. Are you hoping for a boy or a girl?”
He was trying to cajole her into a smile. You can’t cajole me any more than I can do it to little Vicky. But he meant well.
“It doesn’t matter, as long as it’s healthy.” That was what you were expected to say.
“Good,” the doctor repeated.
Life was so simple for some people. He lived in his own country in a fine house. On his desk stood a photograph of his children and his pretty wife. Most probably, they loved each other.