The Uninvited

by Cat Winters

  “You should come over,” I added.

  He shook his head and returned to his whittling.

  I frowned.

  “Ivy?” asked a hesitant male voice from behind me. “Is that you?”

  I turned around and discovered my old friend Wyatt walking toward me with his own sloshing glass of whiskey. He looked to be the same old usual Wyatt, with dark brown hair sticking up on the back of his head like the ruffled feathers of a duck, large ears, and a shirt in need of extra tucking beneath his gray coat. He still worked on his father’s farm near the lake, the last I heard, and he and Sigrid owned their own little house on the edge of the property.

  “I thought that was you,” he said, and he joined me in front of the window, resting his glass next to mine on the sill. “How are you?”

  “I . . .” I peeked across the street and found Daniel gone. The pounding of the nearby drums resonated inside my chest, which now felt hollow and empty. “I’m fine for now. I fell ill with that flu last week.”

  “Oh, God.” Wyatt winced and pressed a hand against his forehead. “Please don’t even say that word.”

  “Has it hit your house, too? Is Sigrid all right?”

  “She and the children have been in the hospital for several days.”

  “Oh no.” I touched his arm. “Oh, Wyatt. I’m so sorry. Is it bad? Are they going to be all right?”

  “I don’t know.” He grabbed up his glass and gulped down the liquor with a swig that must have stung his throat. “I had to get away.” He wiped his damp lips with the back of his hand. “I know I shouldn’t be seeking out pleasures without her, but I had to escape the coughing and the fevers and all that other mess that goes with it. It’s too much. You know what I mean? It’s just too goddamned much for a person to take.”

  “Is there anything I can do for her? She was always so kind whenever any of us got sick as kids, making us little cards and bringing us home-picked flowers . . .”

  “I really don’t think there’s anything any of us can do for her right now.” He scratched at the red tip of his nose. “No one seems to know how to help. The doctor keeps giving her aspirin, but she just throws it up.”

  I turned my eyes toward the swaying couples on the dance floor. “I just—” I swallowed. “I know I’ve been a terrible friend to her these past seven years. I always felt a little awkward, seeing the two of you together . . . after you married. And everyone at home always needed my help. I had my piano lessons . . .”

  He set his glass next to mine again. “How about you dance with me for a little while, for old times’ sake, when life was so much easier? Remember the boat rides, and the motion pictures? And the dances by the lake?”

  I dropped my hand away from his arm. “I don’t . . . No, I’m sorry. It wouldn’t feel right dancing with you, not with her lying ill in the hospital.”

  “I just want a dance, Ivy. Nothing else.” He stepped nearer and caressed the sides of my arms with calloused hands that used to swallow up mine with their size. “I just need to be held by someone for a little while. I can’t stand what’s happening. How can you bear it? Why aren’t you falling apart?”

  I took another look across the street, in search of Daniel, while Wyatt breathed shaky breaths against my cheek. The drums beat so hard in my chest that they felt like a person whacking my heart with a club. My lungs squeezed shut. I couldn’t breathe.

  “Ivy, please . . .”

  “I can’t.” I pushed against Wyatt’s shoulder and nudged him away. “I’m sorry you’re suffering, but I’ve got to go.”

  “But, Ivy—”

  “No. I’m sorry. Other people need us.”

  He called my name again, but I cut through the center of the dancing couples. Elbows knocked against my arms, thick heels tromped on my toes, the scent of whiskey dizzied my head. Yet I managed to push through the crowd.

  Before I pulled open the solid door and escaped into the hallway, Ruth called to me over the horns and the piano, “Don’t be a stranger, Ivy sweetheart.” She gave me a flirty wink, her arms still wrapped around the stocky fellow with the bright green tie. “Next time, wear your dancing shoes and stay for a while.”

  Chapter 10

  Silhouettes of furniture—half-damaged, half-resurrected—stood in the darkness of Daniel’s empty store. The sawdust air tickled my nose. The jazz music played on across the street, but the sound faded into a surreal and cottony memory of another world.

  “Who was that fellow you were with?” asked Daniel from somewhere unseen, giving me a start.

  I clutched my neck and drew a short breath. The brush-brush-brush of sandpaper rubbing against wood started up in the back workroom, hinting at his whereabouts. I followed the noise and found him sanding down the legs of a barstool by the light of a brass ceiling lamp that hung over one of the worktables.

  He peeked up at me with only his eyes. “Do you know him?”

  I shrugged. “What does it matter? You urged me to go up to investigate the music on my own, so I went.”

  “You said people in Illinois don’t have lovers.”

  “He’s not my lover. He’s just . . .” I swept that same unpinned lock of hair from before out of my eyes. “He asked to marry me a long while back, when we were fresh out of school.”

  “And what happened?”

  “I didn’t wish to marry him. I enjoyed his company as a friend, but I didn’t love him.”

  “Hmm.” Daniel kept sanding. “Poor devil.”

  “I wouldn’t feel too sorry for him.” I crept farther inside the workroom with dull smacks of my soles for footsteps. “He ended up marrying a good friend of mine, and I’ve always wished them both well.”

  Daniel lifted an eyebrow. “His wife was at the dance, too?”

  “No, she and the children are suffering from the flu, which has me worried. They’re in the hospital. Wyatt said he needed an escape from everything.”

  Daniel stopped sanding and puffed a sigh through rounded lips.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked. “Surely you don’t care about harmless Wyatt Pettyjohn—”

  “What do you want to do?”

  I straightened my neck. “I beg your pardon?”

  “Do you want to stay here with me, or go back across the street, or . . . or . . .” He pursed his lips and braced his hands against the worktable. “I don’t know why you keep coming here, Ivy.”

  “If you want to me to leave, I’ll leave.” I stepped backward. “I do have more important things I should be doing . . .”

  “I’m not heading out of this building for silly dances. I have no desire to leave.”

  “I didn’t say you had to.”

  “If you want to be with me—”

  “I never said that either. I’m risking my neck just coming here. An APL informant out there already called me a whore.”

  Daniel’s eyes darted toward the entrance to the main section of the store. “You spoke to someone who’s watching you?”

  “He used to be friends with my brother Billy. There are others like him out there, and they’re keeping a close watch on you, too. I overheard a group of APL men talking about shipping you off to a fort of some sort.”

  Daniel let go of the table.

  “I’m sorry to say it,” I continued, “but you have the reputation of being the last German business owner in town. Everyone knows who you are. The APL is making sure the bank doesn’t approve you for a loan.”

  “They specifically said my name?”

  “Yes. I overheard the APL talking about the store when I left the other night. They pulled up in a car and talked about you without realizing I stood around the corner in the dark.”

  Daniel shook his head. “Why did Albrecht first come over here for a better life? Why in hell did he have to go and tempt me to follow him?”

  “I’m sorry. I truly am.”

  He eyed the staircase, just behind me, to my right.

  I glanced over my shoulder at the dim wooden steps. “I-I d
on’t know if I should stay here with you. Lucas—that APL spy—he—”

  “You know what I say to people who call me terrible names?”

  “No.” I peeked back at him. “What?”

  “I tell them they’re small and unimportant. They’re just bullying other people because they’re aware of their own insignificance. They’re specks—which in German refers to bacon fat, but I’m talking about the English meaning. Little dots that carry no weight.”

  I couldn’t help but smile.

  “Come upstairs with me again,” he said, and he wandered around the worktable and over to where I stood in front of shelves of paints and varnishes. With a gentle touch, he slid his left hand through my hair behind my right ear. “Let’s escape this hell together. Who needs it?”

  “Will you kiss me on the lips this time?”

  He shook his head. “No. I’m not going to let myself do that.”

  “Why not?”

  He lowered his eyes to my mouth. “A punishment.”

  “A punishment? For me, you mean?”

  “No, for me.” He brushed his cheek against mine and let his lips hover over the side of my neck. His breath warmed and tingled across my skin.

  “Doing this with me,” I said near his ear, “doing what you did the other night with me—without kissing me—doesn’t help your . . .”

  He raised his head. “It doesn’t help my what?”

  “Your reputation. As a German.” I swallowed. “They say . . .”

  His mouth hardened, and he nodded for me to continue. “Go on. What do people say about us Krauts?”

  “I’m sorry.” I shook my head. “It doesn’t matter. What does anything matter anymore?”

  “They say we’re animals, don’t they? Lust-filled, beer-drinking beasts.”

  “If you just kissed me on the lips, it wouldn’t feel that way.”

  “Come upstairs.” He took my hand in his and stepped backward, toward the staircase. “I’ll kiss you everywhere else—every other square inch of your American body, if you’d like—and I swear you’ll go home not caring whether or not you were with an animal.”

  I squeezed down on his hand. “I don’t think you’re an animal, Daniel.”

  “I don’t care if you do. Just let me take you upstairs again.”

  I turned my face to the dark wedge of the front counter visible beyond the doorway to the store.

  “They’re specks, Ivy,” he reminded me. “Don’t let them stop you from doing what you want to do.”

  I nodded. “You’re right. To hell with them.”

  I RECALLED MY DREAM from the first night living outside of my house—the hazy reverie in which I had danced upon a table with bright-blue butterfly wings hanging off my naked back, while the jazz band wooed me with brass-fueled wails and moans. That same delicious breath of freedom visited me in Daniel’s bed that second night, all my clothing and inhibitions gone.

  My new metamorphosed self.

  Ivy of the Night.

  Afterward, we lay side by side in a tangle of sheets and bare legs and arms, our chests exposed, our faces flushed, our breathing blending in with the percussion of the band. My hair draped across his pillow in honey-blond sheets, freed from the pins that typically clamped it to the back of my head in intricate knots. When she worked at the bakery, Helen always compared my hairstyle to Mr. Weiss’s fancy twisted breads.

  Oh, Helen, I thought to myself with a sigh. Just look at me now. I’ve done exactly what I scolded you for doing—involving myself with a German.

  Beside me, Daniel closed his eyes and drew a long breath through his nose. “‘Bull Frog Blues,’” he said in a voice lush and sleepy, “by the Six Brown Brothers.”

  I smiled. “You’re a veritable jazz library.”

  He shrugged. “I spent so much time in the music store down the way. The owner’s father was from Munich.”

  “Really? Mr. Smith is part German?”

  “No, Mr. Schmidt is part German.”

  “He Americanized his name?”

  “His father did, at Ellis Island, long before the war.”

  I rolled onto my right side, facing Daniel, and propped myself on my elbow. “What about back in Germany?”

  “What about it?”

  “Did you learn how to play the guitar there? Is that where your love of music began?”

  He kept his eyes closed, and I noticed that his lashes carried flecks of both brown and gold. “My father owned a music store,” he said, “and I grew up sampling instruments. Albrecht always loved carpentry, like our uncle, and I was the one who was supposed to go off and indulge in a gypsy life of performing.”

  I bit down on my bottom lip. “What happened?”

  He turned his head toward me and blinked. “What do you think happened? I was a youth in 1914 Germany.”

  “The war?”

  “Of course the war. It took away everything.”

  “Were you—?”

  “No, you don’t want to ask that next question, Ivy.”

  “How do you know what I’m going to ask?”

  “You’re going to ask if I was in the war, in the Kaiser’s army.”

  “Well . . .” I pulled the sheet up over my chest, drawing its warmth around my skin. “Were you?”

  He turned his face toward the ceiling and inhaled another long breath. “As I said, I was a youth in 1914 Germany. Of course I was put into the army.”

  I sank my head back down on the pillow.

  “Bull Frog Blues” transitioned into a new song—a slow and aching melody that triggered tears in my eyes and hurt my throat. A singer joined in, his words too garbled by the closed windows for me to hear them enough to understand what he sang, but his voice resonated with heartbreak and regret and loss. I eased down on my back and imagined Daniel four years younger, forced into a uniform like Billy, shipped off in a train to destinations unknown.

  Daniel swallowed loud enough for me to hear him. “I’m sorry I made you cry.”

  I cleared my throat. Before I could respond and say I forgave him, he added, “. . . by Henry Burr.”

  “Oh.” I sniffed and laughed a little. “Is that the song’s title?”

  He nodded. “‘I’m Sorry I Made You Cry.’”

  Another verse passed, and he reached across the sheet and touched the back of my hand with the tips of his fingers.

  We listened to the rest of the song with our hands pressed together and our eyes closed—or at least mine stayed closed the entire time, and his were shut when I lifted my lashes again. I then withdrew my hand from his, slipped out of bed, and fetched my long white drawers and my brassiere from the floorboards near his guitar.

  “Did you ever see my card for piano lessons when you were visiting Mr. Smith’s store?” I asked while tugging the undergarments over my hips. “‘Tickling the Ivories with Ivy.’”

  “Oh . . . yes.” He smiled. “I didn’t know what that tickling the ivories expression meant at first. I thought it was something lewd.”

  “Oh no! Did you really?”

  He chuckled from deep within his stomach. “I was tempted to telephone that Ivy during a particularly lonely night or two.”

  “Oh no!” I blushed and coughed up a laugh. “You would have been frightfully disappointed when a prim and proper piano teacher showed up at your door with sheet music.”

  “You’re wrong.” He curled onto his side. “I wouldn’t have been disappointed at all.”

  I fumbled to fasten the brassiere around my chest and suppressed a smile that longed to stretch to ridiculous widths.

  Another song rumbled awake across the street: a Scott Joplin composition, “Maple Leaf Rag.”

  “Ooh, I love ragtime,” I said, standing up tall. “It’s what first inspired me to plunk myself down on my grandmother’s piano bench as a child. I begged Granny to teach me how to play it, and when she insisted on the classics, I taught myself Scott Joplin.”

  “And what did Granny say to that?”

&n
bsp; “She told me I would have to give up any concert hall dreams if I insisted on playing Negro music.”

  Daniel snickered.

  I wandered over to the window and debated lifting open the sash to hear better. My right fingers instinctively played the melody on the side of my leg.

  “This music from across the street,” said Daniel from the bed, “it’s like a siren call to you, isn’t it?”

  I smiled and nodded. “Mm hmm.”

  “One day, you’ll find yourself going to it . . . and never coming back.”

  “Well, that’s a little ominous sounding.” I rested my hand on his desk and brushed my palm against the brown passport-style document I’d seen sitting there two nights before.

  I shouldn’t have let my eyes veer toward that private piece of paper. I should have just kept listening to the music—I knew better. But the words on that front cover jumped straight off the page at me.

  UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

  DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE

  ALIEN REGISTRATION CARD

  An official Department of Justice seal involving an eagle and the American flag filled the center of the page. The space at the bottom contained lines specifically pertaining to Daniel:

  Issued to Wilhelm Daniel Schendel

  Address 447 Willow Street

  Buchanan, Ill.

  I moved my hand away from the document and attempted to steady my breathing.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked from behind me, still lying on the bed. “Your back just went stiff.”

  “I’m sorry . . . I just . . .” I peeked over my shoulder at him. “Your registration card is sitting here on your desk.”

  “Oh. That.” He pushed himself up to a seated position. “My ‘enemy alien’ card, you mean.”

  “Yes.” I lowered my eyes. “I suppose that’s what they call it.”

  “What bothers you more about it?” He cocked his head at me. “The fact that I have it? Or my name written upon it?”

  “Your real first name is Wilhelm?”

  “Yes.” He nodded. “Just like Kaiser Willie.”

  “Why don’t you go by William?”

  “I don’t want to be called William. Daniel is one of my names, and it doesn’t need to be twisted and misshapen to sound American.”