by Suzy Vitello
I hold up my injured hand and shake my head when Dad says, “Want to milk her?”
The bag of milk under the goat is disturbing. It’s as if someone has blown up one of my rubber gloves and taped it to the goat’s underside. The ridiculous udder nearly reaches its knees, or whatever the knobby middle section of its legs is called.
“Where are the babies?” I want to know.
Dad smiles. “Well, Liz, that’s sort of the bummer about raising goats for cheese. You have to offload the kids pretty quick, keep the butterfat high. Babies stress the doe out.”
I pull my arms in tighter. “You mean they’re less stressed when the kids just disappear? Don’t they go nuts?”
“Oh, for a day or two. Then they sort of forget they ever had them.”
I imagine Mom, now on a cruise ship in the ocean, probably dancing up a storm with a handsome stranger. Mom, forgetting about me. A small prickle of a tear tries to form in the corner of my eye. I will not cry. Not again.
“We have the milking stanchions over on the side of the shed. It’s getting to be about that time. Want to watch?” Dad grabs Shamrock’s collar and starts hauling the doe toward a stockade-type device. It’s shaped like something from eighteenth-century Salem, where they burned women they thought had powers.
I’m itchy suddenly, as though poison oak has suddenly infested my body from the inside out. My throat, the backs of my hands, under the gloves. It’s taking all my concentration not to scratch.
Dad slams the goat’s head between two wooden slats, Marie Antoinette style. The goat bleats but then seems happy enough when Dad hangs a bucket of grain on a hook near her face. He assembles the goods: the pail, the gloves, a bottle of something with a skull-and-crossbones warning on it. Then, he turns to me. “I’m really proud of you, Liz,” he says, rubbing his stained mechanic’s hands on the hem of my T-shirt sleeve. My arms look even more sticklike next to my father’s sausage fingers, which are like an emery board on my skin, but still, I love feeling them there. “You’ve worked really hard, and your hair is growing in well, and you’ve gained a bit of weight. I think you’ll like it here once you settle in.”
I look down at my sneakers, embarrassed. He has no idea how hard it is, every day, just to do normal things without worrying about germs and feeling out of control. I hated disappointing my father the way I did this past year. The hospitalization, the ongoing sessions with Dr. Greta—I knew I was a drain. Even though Dad regularly comments on my level of flesh, smiling when I gain, frowning when I lose, it doesn’t change anything. I’m not like other anorexics—the girls on the fourth floor of Providence, for instance, who kept thinking they were fat even when they weighed eighty pounds. I know I’m freakazoid skinny. Really, if I had my way, I’d have boobs and hips and long, thick hair.
“Does it hurt?” I ask Dad as he pulls Shamrock’s two teats in an alternating fashion.
“She hasn’t complained,” he says, squeezing fishing lines of milk into the metal pail beneath.
Shamrock’s bag of milk shrinks. Pretty soon the whitish-blue liquid slows to a dribble. I turn away while Dad cleans up. Birds are fighting in a tree nearby; one crow has a squiggle of something hanging out its beak and the other crow wants it. There is squawking and flapping, black feathers soiling the small patch of sky between branches. Nature at its ugliest.
Behind the trees and the crows, a flash of movement comes toward us. The Girlfriend. She’s running toward us at a fast clip. A smile takes up her entire face. It’s so over-the-top she could be a model for Celexa in one of those glossy magazine spreads. I take hold of a post, getting some support from the strong part of the fence, steeling myself for whatever is making her that happy. I can’t help notice how pretty she looks when she smiles that big. Pale and freckled, not one bit of makeup but awesome cheekbones.
Dad lights up as she approaches the goat shed. “Well, hi there, darlin’,” he croons. “What’s got you all bubbly?”
Not only is she Ivory Soap pretty, but she has these mannerisms that make her seem shy and confident at the same time. Like now, when she gathers a hunk of her wheat hair and untucks it from where it caught under the collar of her top. “It’s confirmed,” she says through a smile. “My parents are sending Cory up tomorrow.”
My father, I can tell, is forcing himself to match her enthusiasm. He used to do that with Mom, too. Like when she had the big idea to start a branded calligraphy pen business. Or when she enrolled in chef school. But Mom didn’t have the sweet and wholesome affect. Mom was much more Veronica. The Girlfriend? Total Betty.
“That’s terrific,” says Dad.
She gives me a prying look. “Liz, you’re okay with this, right?”
“His name is Cory?” I say, feigning ignorance, buying time. I’m not sure I’m okay with any of it, but that doesn’t really matter. What would change if I complained?
“Well, it’s short for Coriander,” says The Girlfriend. “My parents are herbalists.”
Dad clears his throat, “So, Willow, I didn’t think this whole thing would happen so soon after Liz getting here. She’s barely had time to unpack.”
“Well,” she says, the intensity of her dazzling smile impossibly ramping up a notch, “we’d better catch her up. Cory will be on tomorrow afternoon’s train out of Eugene. How’s the hand, Liz?”
I tuck a section of bristly hair back into a bobby pin with my bandaged and gloved hand. I can’t help it; I have this tendency to imitate gestures of people who intimidate me. Dr. Greta actually said that was healthy—it meant I was thinking outside of myself. “Okay,” I mumble.
Since The Girlfriend’s appearance at the shed, a dozen goats lumbered up to the fence, and now a bunch of dark, wet muzzles are pushing me and Dad out of the way, vying to be closest to their mistress, the real star of the show. All creatures great and small apparently love her. Definitely a Betty.
“My baby brother is just back from two years abroad,” she says, patting all the floppy-eared heads in turn. “His friends down in Eugene, let’s just say they’re not the most positive influence.”
Dad slips into nervous chuckles. One of his least attractive qualities. “Well, sweetie,” he stammers, “he didn’t have any help drinking the pint of bourbon that got him the minor in possession. What’s the status on his probation?”
“My parents,” she continues, “they’re getting older. After five kids, they’re really over it. You know? I think Coriander would really benefit from some good old farm work.”
I try to picture the parents. What sorts of people name their boy Coriander? I conjure a crone of a woman with a long gray braid, her sagging flesh draped in a hemp muumuu. The dad, I’m sure, is one of those balding ponytail types with a potbelly and bulbous nose. Typical Eugene. Pranksters, stoners, yurt-dwellers. Maybe they have a microbus.
“Where is he going to sleep?” Dad asks.
“We’ll figure it out, Billy,” says The Girlfriend, slightly annoyed all of a sudden.
Billy? My father has always gone by William. But with her being Willow, I can see the problem there. It makes me curious. I wonder about The Girlfriend’s other siblings. So far I know there’s a sister who just had a baby and a brother named Cory who has a drinking problem. “So, Willow, you have four siblings,” I say, trying for the first time to speak her name out loud.
“My parents weren’t Catholic or anything. Just careless.”
Her parents, I figure, might be like these very goats. Breeding, producing unchecked. I nod.
“Cory will be seventeen next month,” she says.
I envision a boy version of The Girlfriend. The pale, freckled Ivory Girl look wouldn’t lend itself well to a boy.
“I guess I can go clean out the granary. We can pick up a mattress at Goodwill,” Dad says, continuing the “where will he sleep?” conversation.
Dad’s girlfriend pouts. Her lips are pale and thin, and turned down they make her much less pretty. This is the opp
osite of Mom, who’s at her most gorgeous pissed off. “It’s summer,” she says. “The sleeping porch upstairs will do for now.”
“Right,” Dad says and then hustles his splashing pail of milk to the shed. Over his shoulder he calls, “Princess, can you help me with something?”
This is code for I need some time alone with you, and I smile. Our secret language, our kinship, is intact and strong as ever. I peel off my gloves and shove them in the pockets of my jeans, then follow my father, leaving The Girlfriend to tend to her goats.
Chapter Eight
I could barely compose myself when I saw Papa swaggering out the door to meet our carriage, a stein of ale in his hand, a huge smile on his handsome face. I handed Sophie to the baby nurse as my siblings scattered to reunite with their belongings. Papa opened his arms, and I leapt at him the way I did when I was small. Alas, I was no longer small and practically knocked him down.
“Sisi, you are a giant.” He laughed, taking steps backwards to keep from falling.
“You’ve returned.”
“Indeed,” he exclaimed. “And I have so many surprises for you children and your mother.”
Mummi lumbered up and muttered, “I cannot wait to see.” Her small dogs stayed close to the hem of her carriage coat and barked shrilly at Papa, as always.
Papa and I followed Mummi into the main hall, where fresh paint and polish greeted us. Vases crammed full of Michaelmas daisies sat on every surface, their blue-purple blooms like veins against the flesh-colored walls. “Ludi,” Papa crooned. “Where’s my hello?”
Mummi turned sharply, took in a breath like she did before barking an order, but one look at Papa’s playful face—ah, she never could quite resist it. After long weeks away, especially. We were the same that way.
With the spaniels snapping at Papa’s heels, he took my mother in a tight, long embrace until her cheeks reddened and she pulled away. “Duke,” she said, “the girl.”
“Very well,” said my father, and he winked at Mummi as though she were his new bride. The rare affection between my parents warmed me, but I knew it wouldn’t last, and before long they’d pass each other as strangers in the hall. Love, demonstrated to be beside the point.
“What surprises?” I wanted to know, hoping that whatever they were, they might please Mummi enough to keep her in good spirits.
“Come,” he said.
The front rooms of the palace were as we’d left them the preceding year. Drawing room, music room, parlor, library. Mummi appraised the drapes, the upholstery, the carpets. The palace was kept much better than Possi, since we often entertained dignitaries and royalty here.
Once we reached the far end of the front apartments, I could sense the surprises would soon follow. I heard sounds. A pipe organ, maybe? There were voices. A party of some sort.
“In the name of the Lord,” gasped Mummi as the hall opened into a room upon which was painted a floor-to-ceiling likeness of Marie Antoinette. Even with my limited studies, I could recognize the teased gray hair, the slate-blue dress finished in Spanish lace. The perfect pink rose in her hand. Petite filigree tables and chairs were scattered beneath Marie. A long bar, upon which pastries and decanters sat, split the room down the middle. On the other side of the bar was a beer garden, complete with peasant women and customers.
“I had this built while we were away,” said Papa, swilling from his stein and then handing it to a chubby beer girl to refill. “It’s Café Chantant and Bavaria Brauhaus, side by side. Isn’t that clever? Now we don’t need to hop the border for our éclairs.”
I was used to my eccentric father’s whims and his invitations to people we’d meet on the street to come visit. For cards. For dance. If Papa had written a new play and was in need of actors, off he’d ride, into the streets of Munich, returning with a merry band of willing peasants. When Papa was home, our evenings were filled with balls, parties, poetry readings. “Even for you, Maxi,” sighed Mummi as the red-faced maiden handed my father his refilled stein, “this is over the top.”
The converted room once housed a collection of chalices, all in glass and gold cabinets, and it certainly seemed more interesting changed to a café and beer garden. There was ivy trained up lattice and over an arbor. Enormous windows cut into the side, where light from the courtyard poured through. I marveled at brightly colored parasols hanging from the ceiling. Just then, a dwarf popped out of a half door and began playing a miniature dulcimer. A drunken woman with a large bosom commenced in a quick polka. Mummi clutched the brooch at her throat. The dogs barked and barked.
“But I have more to show,” bellowed Papa, now dancing a jig himself, locking elbows with the polka woman for one go-round before summoning us to follow him out into the courtyard and across it, to where two grand stable-sized doors graced the far end of the Herzog Palace, doors that had not been there previously.
Mummi made the sign of the cross. I hid my eyes behind my hands.
I heard Papa open both doors. “May I present,” he began, “Cirque du Max.”
When I dared move the fingers away from my eyes, I didn’t know where to look first. A trapeze and high wire installed in one corner, a pony ring smattered with several small jumps, a stadium of seating, a large cage in which slept a striped cat of some type. Colorful balls and hoops were stacked one atop the other. Cones and wires and ribbons dotted the cavernous space. And on one side of the arena, equipped with rakes and brooms and outfitted in short yellow pants, were four shirtless boys, about Gackl’s size but with ebony skin.
“What happened to the Wittelsbach ballroom?” gasped my mother. “You’ve had it gutted and turned into a … a …”
“Circus, Ludi. Where Sisi and I can practice our bareback tricks and we can entertain the bored people of Munich, who are lacking for entertainment now that they’ve sent Lola on her way.”
And then it happened. The turning point I knew was coming, the way it always came between Mummi and Papa. Mummi slapped Papa hard across the face and turned heel, marching back out to the courtyard, her dogs at her skirts.
Papa held the sting spot, which left a big, fat crimson mark on his cheek, and said, “Oh, dear. That didn’t go at all as I’d planned.”
My heart sunk. Again, there would be a wall between my parents. Oh, why couldn’t Mummi love Papa for his big heart, his wild imagination?
The four ebony children clambered up to Papa, and he patted their fuzzy black heads. “And this is the best surprise of them all, Sisi. These blackamoors, I found them in Cairo. They were bound for short lives as ship slaves. I’ve had them christened, and once we teach them a few things, we’ll set them to live as free men. But for now, they may join you and the others in the nursery.”
I adored my father and was normally eager to join in the make-believe, the folly, the fun he provided during his home stays, though even I could see how he’d stretched the limits this time. Papa loved children. All children. But it often seemed as if his own children were no more or less important to him than any others. Sometimes less so, in fact, as he often took his noon dinner with two of his favorite bastard daughters in his private apartment, and woe to any of us Wittelsbach offspring should we interrupt his routine by barging in uninvited. Perhaps Mummi felt this too? Being less important than Papa’s schemes and ideas?
Papa’s eyes were wild, and the green of them swam now in a sea of drink as he introduced me to the latest addition to our ever-growing brood. Watching Papa smile at his newly adopted children, I did feel less special, but what could I do? I took two of the boys in either hand and away I skipped, toward the welcome smells of fresh hay, sawdust and our very own circus. As I did so, from the corner of my eye, I saw a very strange thing. It was Count S., that rogue, and he stood in a far corner, watching and clutching his own stein. He smiled when I turned my face toward him, and he nodded, the way one does when greeting a friend.
I dropped the hands of the young fellows and watched them scurry back to their clu
ster, and then I stood still in front of this man who seemed so cocksure and at ease with himself. Like Papa, the count was in his cups, and it was most noticeable in the ruddiness of his cheeks. Sunlight streaming in from high windows caught his whiskers; they were a scant chestnut color like my mare, Psyche. “You there,” I said sharply, practicing the haughtiness my sister seemed to think was necessary of us duchesses. “I can smell your ale from here. Had a few, yes?”
The ruddy-faced count then winked at me, and before I could speak, Papa appeared next to him, tossing his arm round his shoulder. “This fine young man is a hero, Sisi. A god made flesh. He rescued your father from near death during our climb of the Great Pyramid.”
“What is the Great Pyramid?” I queried before I could stop myself from proving, once again, my ignorance.
At my question, the drunken duo began a little backslapping and chuckling, and their joy in each other made me feel stupider yet. Where was my friend with whom I could savor such a moment? Whereas men enjoyed one another’s company in a complete and thorough hedonism, ladies were confined to corset-breaths and snickers behind fans.
“To make the duke feel at home,” Count S. began between convulsing guffaws, “I enlisted a chorus of yodelers, so he might believe he were scaling the Alps rather than a man-made precipice in the desert—”
Papa interrupted. “And naturally, with all the commotion and singing, I did not pay close enough attention. And then, an unusual occurrence—”
“Rain in Egypt.”
“A downpour.”
“A deluge.”
“A flood.”
Papa extended a foot. “Pyramids, it turns out, are quite slippery when wet.”
“Not to mention the potency of their wine,” said the count.