Safe Haven

by Anna Schmidt

  Instead of making any attempt to ask Detlef about his meeting with Ilse, she worked in silence until the blast of a horn signaled that it was break time. Without a glance at Detlef with whom she usually shared a cup of coffee while she plied him with questions, she hurried off to the restroom. She leaned against the sink and closed her eyes, blocking out her image in the smeared mirror.

  “Your boyfriend is waiting, hon,” one of the other women said as Suzanne washed her hands at the next sink.

  For a moment Suzanne felt hope and relief. Theo had followed her here? Wanted to talk after all? Would rescue her and see her safely home?

  “Can’t think what you see in that Nazi. He’s old enough to be your father, for starters, and you could do a lot better.”

  “It’s not what you think,” Suzanne muttered as she ripped the cloth toweling to an unused section and dried her hands.

  Back on the factory floor, she walked right past Detlef on her way to the office. She tapped on the door frame, and the foreman looked up from his paperwork. “You were late,” he said and turned back to his work.

  “I know. I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.”

  The foreman grunted. Suzanne stepped inside the office. He glanced up. “Something else?”

  “I was wondering if I could switch positions on the line with one of the others.”

  He rolled his eyes. “Look, the POWs are—”

  “It’s not that. Look, if I can find someone willing to switch, would that be okay?”

  “I had this feeling you were going to be trouble from the day you showed up. But I need you, so work it out if you can on your own time. Right now get back to work.”

  “Thank you. I really—”

  He gestured toward the door and the factory where the others were moving like cows in a field back to their stations. “On your own time,” he repeated.

  “Got it.” She returned to her station.

  Detlef glanced at her with one raised eyebrow. “You are in trouble with the foreman?”

  “Not at all.” She turned slightly away from him and focused on her work. When the shift ended, she hurried to find the woman from the bathroom. She made her case for making a switch.

  “Lovers’ quarrel?” The woman grinned knowingly.

  It was the second time someone had said that on this day. “Something like that,” she said, giving into the fact that it was easier to let it go than to try and explain. “So will you trade?”

  “Yeah. Sure.”

  “Thanks. I’ll go let the foreman know.”

  By the time she spoke to the foreman and got her coat, everyone on her shift had left and the next workers were in place. She hurried out, hoping she had not missed the bus back to town. The last of the workers were climbing aboard as she ran across the road waving at the driver to wait for her. And when she boarded there was only one seat available—the seat next to Detlef Buch.

  He pressed himself closer to the window, making room for her. She hesitated and then walked all the way to the rear of the bus to the last row of seats that stretched across the entire width of the vehicle. Two men and a woman seated there moved closer together to make room for her to sit.

  “Glad to see you finally came to your senses,” one of the men muttered.

  Once Ilse got Liesl settled for the night, she joined Gisele outside on the back steps of the barracks. The late April night was unseasonably warm, and Ilse was glad for the breeze. They were facing the lake; the only light came from the tip of Gisele’s cigarette and the lights in apartment windows above and to either side of them. If they looked out toward the water, all was darkness—an infinity of blackness and the unknown.

  “What will you do?” Gisele asked.

  The question was one that needed no further explanation for any of the residents at the fort. As the time came closer for them to leave, it turned out that they might have choices after all. So far none of them involved staying in America, but no longer was their only choice that of returning to the place they had lived before they had been arrested, evicted, or imprisoned.

  “I need to go back to Munich. I need to find Marta and the children.”

  “And Liesl? She doesn’t want to go. She thinks of herself as American. Her friends are here.”

  “But we will have to leave anyway. She cannot stay here, so why not go back to a place we know?”

  “She was not happy there. You were not happy there.”

  “I was a fool in those days.” Ilse’s voice drifted off as she looked out into the night. “What about you?” she asked, turning her attention back to Gisele, who was crushing out the stub of her cigarette. “Will you go to Paris or to Palestine?”

  Gisele sighed. “Does it matter? I know I have been talking about the new state, and if I were ten years younger that might indeed be the best option. As for Paris? Either way I will again be starting over, and I am so very tired of new beginnings. Like your Liesl I have grown used to these Americans and their ways. I would like to stay here—go to New York City and open a little boutique there.”

  “I can see you doing that. Of course you could also open your shop in Paris.”

  “Paris will not be Paris for some time once the war ends, and I cannot live on the memory of what the city once was.”

  “Do you not have family you want to find back there?”

  “My family was taken in the first war—brothers, father. My mother died of a broken heart.”

  “Friends, then—those you told me about working with to get Allied airmen back to England.”

  “Perhaps.” She pushed herself away from the steps and stretched. “The fact is that there is nothing we can count on to still exist from our pasts, Ilse. And so—like it or not—we must make a new future.” She bent and kissed Ilse’s cheek. “Good night.”

  Ilse sat alone for some time after Gisele left. She listened to the laughter and conversation coming from the open windows of the barracks until one by one the lamps went out and all was quiet. It was so quiet that she could hear the lapping of the lake against the shore at the base of the hill where the barracks sat. Their “villa on the hill,” as Franz had called it.

  The sound reminded her of the ocean—the tide coming and going. She thought about Franz, wished he were still with her, and she allowed the tears that she refused to show Liesl or indeed anyone else to fall. “I miss you so very much,” she whispered. “You would know what to do. You would decide for us.” She buried her face in her hands as the tears evolved into sobs. “I cannot do this alone.”

  Not alone.

  It was as if someone had whispered the words in her ear. She lifted her tearstained face and listened to the wind, to the water, and to the reassuring sound of stillness.

  She realized that she had no choice other than to surrender to the will of others and that she would never do. Somehow she would do what needed to be done—protect her child, find her sister, and make a home for them all.

  CHAPTER 15

  Theo stared at the document before him. Leading citizens of Oswego had banded together to pen a petition to the president and to Congress, recommending that the refugees be permitted to reside in places of their own choosing, accept gainful employment to rebuild their broken lives, and be eligible to apply for full citizenship.

  Reading the copy of the petition, Theo felt something he had not felt for some time. Perhaps with the changes in the government following Roosevelt’s death—resignations in key departments and the unknown status of Truman’s views on the situation—there was reason to hope. He wanted to talk with someone about the changes, consider what they might mean. He wouldn’t do that with Ilse or indeed any of the residents of the fort, for they would assume he knew more than he was telling them, and he would not raise false hopes.

  The truth was, the one person he wanted to talk about the changes with most was Suzanne. But ever since that night they had argued, she had avoided him. She had taken to leaving for the cannery early and returning late. He suspected sh
e was spending the time before and after with Buch. And the truth was that this idea filled him not with the rage he had felt that night but rather with jealousy and envy.

  Gordon Langford had been calling Suzanne several times a week, and he’d seen from the mail that Selma left for tenants on the hall table that she had also begun receiving official-looking letters from Washington. Gisele told him that Suzanne continued to interview various people in the shelter, although as word had spread of her association with Buch, more of the refugees had pulled away and refused to have anything to do with her.

  He wished he had not accused her of being so tied to her career that she had lost all perspective when it came to human kindness and understanding. That was not true. And just because the congressman was calling and writing did not necessarily mean that Suzanne was returning his attention. Theo suspected that whatever drove Suzanne was rooted in her past beyond the disaster of the news story that had destroyed her career. Something had happened earlier in her life that lay at the root of her cynicism and devotion to her work.

  He had noticed that in spite of her many contacts she did not appear to have much interaction with her family and she did not have any real friends. What was her story?

  That night he sat on the front porch of the boardinghouse, rocking in the swing until he saw her get off the bus and walk slowly, wearily toward the house.

  “Hi,” he said as she mounted the steps and started toward the front door.

  “Hello.” The greeting was guarded and filled with suspicion. She hesitated but did not move away from the door.

  “If you’re not too tired, I thought we might take a walk. It’s a beautiful spring night.”

  She dropped her shoulder bag onto one of the wicker chairs and perched on the arm. “This is new,” she said.

  “Yeah, well, sometimes I can act like a spoiled brat—just ask my brother and sister. I realized I had gone a little overboard, but then time went by. You were busy. I had extra duty at the shelter, and—”

  “If this is your idea of an apology, you are really bad at it.”

  “What if I said I miss you—miss what we used to have?”

  “And what was that exactly?”

  “Friendship?”

  She shrugged. “More like two lost souls thrown together.”

  “Maybe. Seems like we helped each other, though. Back last fall it seemed like we might find our way together.”

  “Friends,” she murmured as if it were a foreign word to her.

  “For starters.”

  She let this linger in the silence. “How is Ilse?”

  “Stronger than I gave her credit for.”

  “I’m glad to hear that.”

  “So can we go for that walk?”

  “Okay.”

  They covered three blocks before either spoke, but by the second block he had taken her hand and she had not pulled away.

  “Ilse gave me your sister’s mailing address in England to give to Buch,” she said finally.

  “She told me she had done that. At first I didn’t understand why, but then she reminded me that Beth’s husband deserved to know what had happened to his parents regardless of what they had done. I really couldn’t argue the point.”

  “That was … right after you and I quarreled. She saw me at the fort one day and handed me the information, but she has refused to speak with me since. She is always cordial when we happen to pass on the grounds or in town, but she does not stop to chat.”

  “She believes that Buch can either tell her what happened to her sister, Marta, and the children or that he knows how to lead her to someone who can help her. Has he said anything to you?”

  “We … I haven’t spoken with him.”

  “About my aunt?”

  “About anything. I am no longer interviewing Detlef Buch.”

  Theo tightened his hold on her hand. “Why not?”

  “Because you were right. I was walking a dangerous line, and my contact with him has hurt my position with those living at the fort.” She walked with her eyes on the ground, not looking at him. “Remember Gordon Langford—the man who ruined my career last summer?”

  “Yeah.”

  “He’s now serving on the Immigration Committee for the House. He was here on official business and asked me to meet him for dinner.”

  “And did you?”

  “Yes. It was the same night I ran into Detlef Buch at the library—talk about coincidences. Gordon had just asked me to see what I could find out about a high-ranking Nazi official who was supposedly living in a nearby POW camp. That night when I met Buch, I knew I had found him.”

  “And?”

  “And nothing,” she snapped. “You know the rest.”

  “What about Langford?”

  “What about him? He writes and calls. He thinks Detlef is the answer for resurrecting his career.”

  “As did you once,” Theo gently reminded her.

  “Yeah, well, somewhere along the way I seem to have grown a conscience. Sorry I can’t say the same for Gordon.”

  “I won’t pretend not to be relieved. This is why I wanted you—and my aunt—to be careful how you interacted with Detlef Buch. I don’t doubt for a moment that, like your congressman, his first priority is his own future.”

  “He is hardly my congressman.” They walked for another block in silence before she asked, “What exactly did he tell Ilse—about her sister?”

  “Nothing, but he did recognize her brother-in-law’s name and identified him as a double agent who had been captured and hung.”

  Suzanne shuddered. “And he knew nothing of Marta?”

  “He said that he believed she had been arrested. If he knew anything more, he was not giving that information away. Perhaps it is something he sees as information he might trade.”

  “For what? Ilse has no power.”

  “I don’t know, but this is a desperate man. He is not a simple soldier of the Reich who will likely be set free and returned to Germany once the war ends. Detlef Buch is a war criminal who will be expected to pay for his crimes.”

  “And what if he, too, was playing both sides?”

  “Is that what he told you?”

  “Not in so many words, but there are hints in what he has said that perhaps he tried to warn others as he did your uncle and that he made copies of the records he was charged with keeping and smuggled them from the office.”

  “So he says. Suddenly you of such little faith are willing to take this man at his word?”

  “Let’s leave my faith out of this.” She pulled her hand free of his.

  “Okay, sorry. That wasn’t fair. It’s just that during this time we’ve been … apart, it occurred to me that I know so little about you.” This was why he had waited on the porch for her—not to talk about Detlef Buch—or Gordon Langford.

  “What do you want to know?”

  A thousand questions flooded his brain and finally melded into one. “Who are you when you are not the journalist? Who were you before you were a journalist?”

  She did not answer him for a long moment. He waited, giving her the time she clearly needed to form her response. Did she even know herself who she was without the label of “reporter”?

  “You are really asking what happened. Where did I lose my way?”

  “All right. Start there.”

  She sucked in a breath and slowly blew it out between pursed lips. “When I was a teenager,” she began, “my sister—Natalie—was in a car accident that left her confined to a wheelchair and that damaged her brain to the point that she could barely communicate. The thing was that her mind still worked—she just appeared to be retarded. …”

  “Natalie was younger?”

  “Yes. By the time she entered high school, I was already a senior. She used to tease me about how glad she was that I would finally be going off to college and she could finally have the bedroom we had shared all her life to herself.”

  Theo saw the wistful smile that flickered
across her lips and disappeared. “What happened?”

  “The summer after I graduated, Natalie went off to summer camp. We had both attended this camp from the time we were nine, and that summer, Natalie was going to be a junior counselor. She was so very excited. I was supposed to be there as well as a senior counselor, but I got the opportunity to take a writing course at the college in our town and decided to do that instead.”

  “The car accident happened while she was at camp?”

  Suzanne nodded. “She got involved with some boy from the nearby town and started sneaking out after curfew to meet him. He was older, and that night he was drinking and …” Her voice trailed off. “My parents were out when the call came. I was the one who answered the phone.”

  “Oh honey, that must have been awful for you.” He reached out to touch her, but she held up her hand, preventing his comfort.

  “The next week was a complete nightmare. Natalie had to be transferred to a hospital miles away. She was barely clinging to life for days. My parents never left her side, sleeping next to her bed. I put off starting college for that fall semester so I could work in my father’s store in the small town where we lived. Our neighbors and friends were incredible. But that boy—and his parents …”

  “He must have been injured as well.”

  She turned on him, her eyes blazing. “Not a scratch and do not defend him. He almost killed—he actually did kill her—and not once did he call or write or come to see her. His father was some bigwig in that town, and the boy was a huge football star who had a scholarship to a major university. The whole thing was covered up. I don’t think he got so much as a ticket.”

  They had circled the area and were again approaching the boardinghouse. The windows were all dark, and the porch was in shadow lit dimly by the streetlamp. “Let’s go sit,” he suggested.