She’s shedding, I think. Like a malnourished stray.
“I’ve lived too long, Liebchen,” she says.
“Nonsense.”
“It’s the truth. I’ve lived too long, and I’ve seen too much. Now help me up, Liebchen. I want to show you something while we’re alone.”
Oma and I walk down the upstairs hall to her room, a room that used to be mine, with windows overlooking the back garden and, farther past it, the endless rows of new houses. With my help, she arranges herself in a chintz wing chair, and asks me to bring over the ottoman for her legs. Her ankles have disappeared altogether, they’re so swollen.
So this is what old age looks like.
“Oh, Oma,” I say.
She waves a hand in the air, a delicate gesture but dismissive all the same. “Enough of that. Go open the cedar chest in the corner and bring me the blue box—no, not that one. The bigger one, nearer to the bottom.”
I do as I’m told, resting the box in her lap. It’s tied loosely with fraying twine, and she tugs at one of the ends until the bow is nothing more than a pile of curled string. The loops make me think of fat Qs, their tails tentacles.
“You lift the lid for me,” she says, her hands falling limply to her sides as if they have had enough work for one day.
And so I do.
Inside the box are neatly pressed and folded layers of material, blue wool and white cotton. A black necktie lies coiled at one side, its edges worried by dry rot. I can’t imagine why Oma wants me to see her old uniform, not after all these years.
“This was your school uniform?” I say, fingering the coarse blue wool of the skirt.
“It was a uniform,” she says. “But not for school.” Oma still pronounces the soft sh at the beginning of the word. “Take it out if you like. The shoes are in a bigger box in the chest.”
I unfold the items one by one, first the white poplin blouse, which against the bedspread reveals itself to be not white but an aged yellow. I lay the skirt with its center pleat over the blouse’s tails and uncoil the necktie. It’s brittle, and fine black powder rains down on my hands.
“Now the shoes, Liebchen. The marching Schuhe.”
“Oma? Are you okay?”
“The SCHUHE, girl! Get them.” She strikes the floor once with her cane, hard.
From the heavy second box I take a pair of stiff black lace-ups. When I set them down on the hardwood, the sound gives away their secret—on the heel and toe each is a horseshoe-shaped metal plate, like a tap.
“You see now, Leni?” Oma says.
I don’t see at all. Unless my grandmother is trying to tell me she was in a strange kind of militaristic tap-dancing troupe in 1930-something. My hands run over the material, sensing the different textures, feeling the round edges of the blouse’s buttons. Each one is embossed with letters.
“What’s BDM and JM?” I say. “Your school?”
Instead of answering, she orders me to sit down. “I’m going to tell you something, Leni. Something I have never told anyone. Not even your father.”
“Okay.” The sound of her voice makes me wonder whether I want to know.
Oma relaxes back into the chair, loosens the grip on her cane, and starts to talk.
“I knew a girl when I was young. She wasn’t poor—her family was quite wealthy. Her father worked as a doctor, and her mother taught mathematics in the Gymnasium in my town. And Miriam and I were very good friends.” Oma’s eyes begin to shine. “Very good friends. Like sisters.” Her eyes shine even brighter, and I don’t ask whether she still knows Miriam, or where Miriam is. “My father and my great-uncle made me join the Bund Deutscher Mädel as soon as I was old enough. I think you know what that means, yes?”
I work out the German. “Band of German something.”
“In English, they called it the League of German Girls.” She nods toward the clothing laid out on the bed. “My father bought me the uniform and the shoes. I didn’t like it at first, but for my birthday that year he made me a present of the special taps and he sent me to the shoemaker to have them put on. And you know what?”
“No.”
“I liked it. I wore the uniform every day to the activities after school and to the evening meetings. After a while, I started wearing it to school also. As did many of the other girls. Will you get me some juice from the little fridge?”
I find a can of apple juice and pour it out. Oma sips greedily, and her voice takes back some of its smoothness when she resumes talking.
“School became very different. After the uniforms. Girls who used to skip the rope and play other games together began to separate. My father told me I was not to speak to Miriam while I was wearing the BDM clothing.” She laughs the kind of laugh with no humor in it. “It did not matter. Miriam had long stopped speaking to me.”
There’s a long pause.
“What happened to Miriam?” I say when the pause has stretched out until it’s no longer comfortable.
“I don’t know.” Oma’s eyes flick once to the window before coming back to me. “No. I do not know. After, I joined the local Glaube und Schönheit group, and I began to study art.” Another laugh. “Faith and beauty. It is funny that none of my art ended up being beautiful.” Her eyes sweep the far wall of the room.
I follow them.
Most of Oma’s paintings are shades of gray and black, abstract depictions of walls and fences, the images of separation. They make me wonder what kind of art I would have created had I listened to my heart instead of my husband.
EIGHTEEN
THEN:
I sat in the back room, where my father had knocked a new window through the wall when he made me a studio of my own. The studio wasn’t mine anymore, not full-time, but I used it when I came back home during summers, or when I escaped the chill of Connecticut Februaries for the—slightly—more temperate weather of Maryland over spring breaks. This room was warm in the winter with its humming radiators, cool in the summer when the wind blew through the screen of the open window, and damn near perfect on this November day.
I should have been poring over art history texts, boning up on the Pre-Raphaelite masters before Thanksgiving vacation was over, but the blank canvas called out to me, almost begging for color.
Malcolm came by in the morning, also back from college. He kissed me lightly and took my left hand. “You really want to wear your ring while you paint, El?” Then, looking at my work in progress: “What the hell is that?”
“First,” I said, “the ring’s washable. Second, this is art. Like it?”
A shake of his head told me he didn’t. Not one bit.
“Good thing I got you out of the postmodernist world and back into the real one, hon.” He bent his head, first to the right, then left, then back to middle. “What’s it supposed to be?”
“Sex.”
“Good sex or bad sex?” Now he was nearly upside down, trying to make sense of the swirls of red and orange.
“Good,” I said. And blushed.
He sat in the chair my grandmother often occupied. It didn’t fit him well, not with its size or floral-patterned chintz. But then, nothing ever seemed to fit Malcolm Fairchild, not naturally. He simply adapted the world to his own ways, forcing it to fit.
“I’ve got news,” he said.
“Good news or bad news?”
“Excellent news.”
I put down my brush and wiped my hands on a rag. I had news, too. Oma had exchanged emails with a former colleague down at the Savannah School of Art and Design. We were driving to Georgia on Saturday to talk about graduate school. I started to tell Malcolm, and we started to speak at the same time. We laughed.
“You first,” he said.
“No. You go first.”
It was always like this between us, more so in the year we’d been engaged.
; Now he stood and took my paint-smeared hands in his own. “I’ve decided on a master’s program.”
“Okay—”
“Aren’t you going to ask me where?”
His pout was almost cute, so I took the bait. “Where?”
“Penn!” Before I could say anything, he went on. “They’ve got a rock-star ed school, El. Combine that with poli-sci, and I can write my own ticket. And—if you still want to think about my little idea—a great life science program for you. We could get an apartment downtown, save up, and get married like we talked about.”
We had talked about it. But between the summer and now, other things had happened. I’d been painting more, stretching myself into new forms. I’d gotten a piece into a juried show in New Haven. I’d been invited to Savannah. “I—”
Malcolm held his hands up. “Wait. Just wait until you hear me out, honey.”
I waited.
He took a magazine out of his coat pocket and flipped it open to an article in the middle. “Science, tech, engineering, and math. They’re pouring money into it, El. Guaranteed bucketloads. And by the time I’m where I want to be, there’ll be more money for the top-tier STEM schools. The only thing is you have to be good enough to teach at one. And you have to stay good enough. But you will. I know you will.” He hugged me then, a long hug. “My brilliant wife-to-be.”
I think it was fear that swayed me, fear I’d never paint anything worthy of a real gallery, that I’d be stuck teaching like Oma. Did I want to watch and wait for one of my own students to strike gold in the art circuit, see myself occasionally mentioned—if it was mentioned at all—on a line in someone else’s biography? I saw an older version of myself, living on the generosity of my own children, and I didn’t like this vision.
We had lunch with my parents and my grandmother. Oma seemed surprised when I waffled on the subject of Saturday’s trip down south. I manufactured a lie about a project I needed to catch up on, making it sound as if I’d have to stay glued to textbooks for the weekend, which meant I ended up staying away from my studio. The unfinished canvas was still there on Sunday when Dad drove me to the airport, and Oma’s smile as she kissed me goodbye couldn’t hide the disappointment in her eyes.
Four days after Thanksgiving, I switched my major from art to life science.
It had been Malcolm’s suggestion. “Only a suggestion. You can be anything you want,” he’d said. But when I thought of the money I could make teaching in one of the new silver schools, I leaped at it. No more struggling, no more pinching pennies to cover the electric bill. We’d fit into the world, and make the world fit us. We’d create our very own master class.
NINETEEN
Oma finishes her apple juice and leans back into the chair, obviously tired.
“You must stop thinking about these Qs. Or,” she says, “perhaps you must learn to think of them in another way. Think of them as questions you need to ask. And think about whether you want to send your daughter to one of these new schools.”
“They’re not the same thing as the—” I don’t know how to say it, so I don’t. “As the places where you were born.”
“You don’t think so, Liebchen?”
“Of course not.” It’s laughable, really. Oma has a good heart, but she’s always been prone to that certain hyperbole that comes with age.
She waves me away, as if she senses my ridicule and sees the disbelief in my eyes. “I’ll tell you more. When you are ready to hear it. Now, I am ready for my nap. Please put those . . . things back for me.”
From the kitchen, Mom calls me to lunch, and smells of Rouladen and seasoned Blaukraut waft up.
“Okay, Oma. After lunch, I’ll come back up,” I say, leaving her in the chair and folding up the uniform. My grandmother is already asleep by the time I put everything back into the cedar chest and pull her door closed.
When I reach the top of the stairs, I see Malcolm staring up at me from below.
“Get your coat, Elena. And Freddie’s and Anne’s,” he says, as if he’s speaking to his admin assistant or the kid he hired as an intern a few months ago. And then, before I can say a word: “Now.”
I’ve never been afraid of Malcolm, never been intimidated by him the way others are, the way Freddie is when he uses “Daddy’s scary voice,” as she calls it when he’s not around. Still, my body shrinks back against the wall, my limbs weak and almost jelly-like. Because his voice is scary in its definiteness.
Funny how I never realized this before now.
“We’re having lunch, Malcolm. My mother’s cooked it, and we’re eating it.” For effect, I add, “Now.” I want to walk toward him while I speak, but my legs aren’t up to the task. Not yet. So I square my shoulders and lift my chin, a small gesture that tells him I won’t be backed down in this Mexican standoff.
It doesn’t work.
Malcolm disappears into the little vestibule at the front of the house and reappears with three coats and three pairs of shoes. “We’ll eat at home today. And tomorrow. Just the four of us.” He sounds pleased with the prospect, and I wonder if he’s imagining I buy into his bullshit the same way I used to. Back then, I did buy into it. I gobbled up his snobbery and swallowed it whole, like some urban whore turning tricks in a cheap room, selling herself for cash, a fix, approval.
We stare at each other for a long minute, and I know he’s been listening from the bottom of the stairs. Nothing to do now but bundle up and walk out the door with him, this husband I’m told I need. This husband I loathe.
Or.
I could refuse. I could put my foot down and stay here with Mom and Dad and Oma, turn back invisible hands on an invisible clock and live the life I used to live, but differently, with only Freddie. But Anne catches me musing and gives me a pleading look. She’s my daughter as much as Freddie is. I can’t unconceive her, and I can’t give her up.
“What’s this?” Mom has come tripping into the living room, apron still on, a cloud of flour dust sparkling around her in the shaft of afternoon sun. Freddie’s behind her, holding twin apron strings and giggling.
I love Freddie this way.
“Malcolm wants to go home,” I tell Mom, and Freddie’s giggles stop, like someone has just thrown a switch.
“Before lunch? I’ve just sliced up half a salami.” If there’s a true evil in the world according to the Gospel of Sandra Fischer, it’s an overabundance of already-sliced cold cuts. My mother, a child of a child of a long-ago depression, hates waste. “Stay. Have lunch. You can go home after.”
Freddie is down on the carpet, an old frayed and sun-faded remnant from my mother’s first home, before Malcolm has the chance to open his mouth. She’s started her rocking routine, shutting out the world around her, keeping all hurt at bay.
“Christ,” Malcolm says. “Again?”
And then, loud and clear and horrible, he says the worst thing I can imagine.
“This is why she needs to go, Elena. She’s not right in the head.”
Every limb in my body seems to respond at the same time. My feet carry me down five steps in what feels like a single movement. My left arm arcs backward, part of me and not part of me at once. My mouth opens and forms the syllables of “bastard” as a fist I didn’t know I was capable of strikes Malcolm squarely in the jaw, slanting off, hurting.
Malcolm says nothing, only pushes a bundle of coats and shoes into my chest. They’re heavy, but not as heavy as my rage.
“You fucking son of a bitch,” I whisper.
And I know now that, one way or another, we’re over.
It takes me thirty minutes to get Freddie’s coat and shoes on.
Malcolm waits in the vestibule, tapping his Bruno Magli–clad foot and scowling. My parents and Anne stand quietly in a corner of the living room, deliberately not making anxiety-inducing eye contact with Freddie, although Dad turns toward the front door e
very few seconds to toss an icy glance at Malcolm.
“It’s all right, baby,” I say in my soft voice, a voice that struggles to emerge as my ugly voice, the one I want to use toward my husband, boils up and battles for control. “Ice cream at home. And then we’ll watch the movie about the princess, okay?”
Ice cream and princesses are the last fucking things on my mind. Brass knuckles and Amazon warriors, though, yeah.
Finally, Freddie’s settled.
“Go on and kiss your Oma and Opa now.” I want to bring her upstairs to kiss her great-grandmother goodbye, but Malcolm has already opened the front door, letting a chilly breeze in. As if it weren’t cold enough in the house.
Now it’s my turn to make the rounds. They’re less permanent, as I know I’ll be seeing my parents and grandmother before long, probably next weekend. Probably sooner than that, since the thought of spending one more second than necessary with Malcolm tastes like yellow bile.
It’s cute how wrong I am, and how I don’t even know it. Not yet.
I shrug my coat on and trade soft slippers for my hard leather shoes, imagining them as combat boots I’ll need for the ride home. Malcolm leads our unhappy little parade out to the car: him, then Freddie and Anne, then me.
And then a blur of terry cloth and gray hair emerges from the doorway. My grandmother.
She’s almost running toward me on two legs and a cane, reaching out to the coat on my back with her other hand, clawing.
“Don’t let her go, Leni. Whatever you have to do, don’t let her go to that . . . place.” Another word lingered on her lips. Nearly another week will pass before I understand the full weight and meaning of the word she stifled.
“What am I supposed to do about it?” I say. “It’s the law.”
Oma yells to Malcolm to wait with a force that surprises everyone. She pulls me close and asks me one question: “Do you want Freddie in a prison?”
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