For the first time, I was allowed to use the kitchen without asking permission. I cooked my first meal for William and Robert. It was a complete disaster. The meat tasted like cardboard. William spit it out and jumped up to make himself a peanut butter, banana, and potato chip sandwich. Robert was gallant enough to try to eat it, chewed the meat-turned-leather for a few minutes, and finally gave up.
”I’m sorry,” I said. “I really don’t know how to cook. I never learned. Father and I ate out or took sack lunches because he worked in the evenings.” I felt more than a little guilty. Meat was rationed; it felt like a crime to waste it.
Robert only laughed. “Finally! Something you don’t excel in.” He got up and looked in the cupboard. He pulled out a blue box of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese. It was a fairly new product that made a big hit as a substitute for meat and dairy products. And best of all, two boxes required only one rationing coupon.
Typically, Miss Gordon jumped up as the last bite was eaten and started cleaning up the dishes. In her absence, we lingered at the table. After dinner, Robert played the guitar, and I played the piano. I showed William how to feel the vibration of the strings when I hit a piano key.
I tucked William into bed, turned to say good night, and noticed a framed picture of his mother had been placed on his bureau. Nice touch, Robert, I thought to myself. William pointed to the picture and said, “Girl.” It sounded like “grrrr.”
“Girl! Yes, William! Girl,” I repeated the word very clearly. Then I pointed to him. “Boy,” I said, and he repeated a sleepy attempt for “boy.” I smiled and kissed him on the forehead.
I turned on the radio while I washed up the dinner dishes. Robert helped me dry and put them away. I was eager for the evening news. The war reports were quite encouraging of late. Tonight, the national news broadcast reported that Hitler’s armies were starting to get backed into Germany. The reporter announced that Hitler, knowing he was losing the war, had recently created a new militia, requiring all men aged sixteen to sixty to serve.
Robert took the dish towel out of my hands to hang it on the rack to dry. “Can you imagine, asking a sixty-year-old man to be a soldier? There must not be any men left in Germany,” Robert said.
I shrugged my shoulders.
“Doesn’t that bother you?”
“No! I pray every day that Germany will lose this war! And soon. Hitler must be stopped!” I said it with such severity that Robert looked taken aback. I turned back to the sink, embarrassed, my face flushed.
He turned off the radio. “Enough news for tonight.” He filled up Dog’s water bowl and put it by the door before leaving to go to his office. “The end of the war will come, Louisa. Try to be patient.”
In the middle of the night, I woke myself up, gasping for air, crying out, trembling in fear.
Robert stood at my door, looking stricken. “Louisa, what is it? What’s wrong?”
I was so frightened from my nightmare that I couldn’t talk.
He turned on the light next to my bed. “Would it help to tell me about the dream?”
I shook my head.
“Try.”
“Der Alptraum. Ebendasselbe!”
“Wait, slow down. English, Louisa. You’re speaking in German.”
“It’s the same nightmare I’ve had before.” My heart raced. I tried to speak between sobs. “I’m in Dachau. In Germany. It’s a terrible place. It’s a relocation camp for Jews and Gypsies and anyone else the Nazis want to get rid of. It has high fences and barbed wire. And gas chambers. And tall chimney stacks for the crematorium. And the evil there, it’s palpable.”
I paused to take deep gulps of breaths. “Standing at the fence is my father, my mother, my aunt, and my little cousin, Elisabeth, and Deidre, and Mrs. Steinhart, my other friends, and all of the Bonhoeffers. Everyone I knew and loved in Germany. They’re all in the camp, faces pressed against the wire fence, barbed wire above us, and they’re reaching their hands out for me. Through the fence, their hands try to grab on to me. Begging me to help them. Asking me for food and water.” I gasped for air. “And I just keep walking past.”
“It’s just a nightmare. It isn’t real.”
“But it is real! Dachau is real! All of those camps are real!”
“But you’re not there. You’re here in Copper Springs, Louisa, not in Dachau. You’re safe. It was just a bad dream.”
“You don’t understand. I should be there. It isn’t right I’m here and they’re there.”
“No, sweetheart, it isn’t right that they are there.”
William’s head poked around my door. The light in my room must have woken him. Seeing his innocent face helped me shake off that feeling of dread from my nightmare. I motioned to have him climb up on the bed. He scrambled up, wiggling under the covers. Calmer now, I asked Robert, “do you mind if he stays?”
“Sure. Will you to be able to sleep?”
I nodded.
Robert turned off the light. “Night,” He said before closing the door. I snuggled William close to me. Just as I was drifting back to sleep, my eyes flew open: Robert had called me sweetheart.
* * *
My holiday from Miss Gordon only lasted a week. Robert received a telegram from her, telling him she would be returning on Saturday. Miss Gordon wouldn’t use the telephone; she didn’t trust it. She thought everyone in the county would listen in to her conversation.
Having her away for the week had been such a nice change of routine. William and I galloped our way through correspondence lesson number ten. Robert didn’t go out in the evenings as he customarily did. I played the piano whenever I had a whim, which was often. I wondered, a little wistfully, if this was what it would be like to have a family of my own.
Winter, even in a desert, meant the nights grew cold and long as days grew shorter. My garden was winding down. I was outside gathering the last of the broccoli, onions, and carrots into a basket as Rosita and Esmeralda strolled past, Ramon pushing the wheels of his wheelchair beside them.
I had a great admiration for Ramon. I never saw a shred of self-pity. He was proud to have served his country, even if that sacrifice cost him his legs.
“Your Victory Garden looks good, Louisa.”
“Thank you!” I replied. “Here, Rosita, take some of my vegetables. I have too many.” I put some large onions in her hands and handed Ramon some carrots and broccoli to hold on his lap.
“Louisa, I been thinking. How about you teach my Esmeralda to play on that piano?” Rosita asked.
“Hmmm. I hadn’t even considered giving piano lessons. I’ll have to ask Miss Gordon when she returns home. She says that a piano sets her teeth on edge.”
Rosita laughed. “You think about it and let me know. I think Esmeralda has much talent. I pay you, too.”
“No, Rosita, I would teach her as a thank you to you for being such a nice friend to me.”
“No deal. Either all business or no deal.” Rosita headed back up the street.
Ramon said, “Don’t waste your time arguing with Rosita, Louisa. She is like a burro.”
I walked over to the church office and asked Robert what he thought about the idea of giving piano lessons. “What do you think your aunt would say?”
He shrugged.
“Then I could help pay for my expenses,” I offered.
“Louisa, I didn’t give you the piano so you would feel the need to earn an income. If you want to teach lessons and Aunt Martha agrees to it, then the decision is yours. But you keep your money. You more than earn your keep. I just wanted you to be able to play.”
“Maybe I could teach on Wednesday nights when she goes to choir practice. I could save the money I earn for my return ticket to Germany after the war is over. It should be over soon, don’t you think?”
Robert looked at me with a surprised look on his face. “Well, not in the immediate future. It’s going to take patience, Louisa.” Then, uncharacteristically abrupt, he said, “If you’ll excuse me, I need to fini
sh reading this report from the Presbytery.” He went back to studying his paper.
* * *
Anticipating Miss Gordon’s critical eye for detail, William and I spent all of Saturday morning cleaning and scrubbing the house while Robert went to the train station in Tucson. When she arrived back home, she looked around and sniffed, “Well, I can see nothing has been done while I’ve been gone. Someone get me my broom.”
After she had re-cleaned the house, I asked her what she thought if I were to give Esmeralda a piano lesson once a week.
Not too surprisingly, she would have none of it. “I need that like a submarine needs a screen door. Besides, a parsonage is not a place for commercial enterprise,” she said, effectively closing the subject.
* * *
My first Christmas in America came quietly on a clear, cold day. Robert was busy with the Christmas Eve service, so we opened gifts on Christmas morning. The hit of the morning was a slightly used red bicycle for William from his father, boldly waiting under the tree. Like so many manufactured products, bicycles weren’t being made during these war years, so Robert had to hunt to find one. Symbolic, it seemed, of Robert’s change in perceiving William as a normal child who was hard-of-hearing rather than as a handicapped child.
I had made a bargain with Miss Bentley for used books from the library’s book sale. In exchange, I was the guest reader for the Children’s Story Hour for the next three Wednesdays. I’d been eager to get started on teaching William to read, so I was thrilled when I stumbled on a well-loved set of the McGuffy Readers.
For Miss Gordon, I chose a slightly used Good Housekeeping 1943 cookbook that included a special section for rationed foods. And I found Robert a thick and exhaustive book on the history of copper mining. That book looked new; I doubted it had ever been checked out. A slim audience, I reasoned. Robert was delighted with it.
Then Robert and his aunt surprised me with a radio for my bedroom. “I can’t stand listening to any more of those depressing news reports you’re so hooked on,” she chided.
“But they’re not depressing if you hear news reports of Allied victories!” I defended.
Rosita had given me a coupon she had hand-made to be used for a free haircut at her salon. I frowned when I saw it; I knew she was eager to update my hairstyle. I stood up to gather some of the wrappings for Miss Gordon’s recycling bin. She was in the kitchen, basting the Christmas turkey, and William was spinning the wheels on his bicycle. The house smelled heavenly.
I sat down again, transfixed, closing my eyes to savor the morning, wanting to cement every detail in my mind. My thoughts drifted back to one year ago today. I was alone on an impersonal cargo ship, tossing about on the freezing winter cold of the Atlantic Ocean, knowing I couldn’t go back and unsure of what lay ahead of me. And who knew where I would be this time next year?
Robert interrupted my musings by handing me a brown paper package, wrapped with a piece of twine. I looked up at him, puzzled.
“Open it,” he said with a shy grin.
It was a book of compositions by Felix Mendelssohn. I turned over each page, hearing the scores dance in my head. He had remembered Mendelssohn was my favorite composer. I had told him nearly a year ago on that first drive back from Mrs. Drummond’s house. I had to blink back tears as I thanked him.
Miss Gordon outdid herself on a delicious Christmas feast and then wouldn’t let anyone help her clean the kitchen. “Everyone out! You’re all as slow as molasses on a January morning,” she said, shooing us out. So I sat by the parlor window, warmed by the afternoon sun, looking more carefully through the book of Mendolssohn compositions, but I kept getting distracted by the sight out the window.
Out on the empty street, Robert patiently taught William how to ride the new red bicycle. Over and over they started. Robert held on to the back of the bicycle seat. As William gained speed, Robert would let go. William would pedal madly until he realized that his father wasn’t holding on. Then he would start to weave, his bicycle would lean precariously over, and Robert would catch the back of the bicycle seat to help him regain his balance. And his confidence.
Progress was slow, but the joy on William’s face was immeasurable.
Miss Gordon came to see what I was watching. We both watched the hard-at-work pair. Then she remarked, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen them like that.”
“Like what?” I asked, eyes fixed on them.
“Happy.” With sudden and inexplicable affection, she kissed me on the top of my head and went back into the kitchen.
Not long into the New Year of 1944, Miss Gordon’s cousin, Ada, wrote to say she was planning to come for a visit to help her recover from the loss of her husband, Teddy. I relinquished my bedroom and prepared to bunk in William’s room on one of the twin beds.
I was expecting a woman much like Miss Gordon, so I cleaned my room inside and out and tried to think up more places for William and me to go, to get out of the house as much as possible. Not for the first time, I grumbled to myself that Copper Springs sorely needed a bus system. Not that I had any place in mind to go, but a bus would have been particularly useful during times of visits from any Gordon relatives.
Robert went to the train station to meet Ada. A few hours later, she burst through the front door without even a knock, as Robert lugged suitcases the size of coffins behind her. “Yoo hoo! Marty Girl! Where are you?!”
Marty Girl? Could she possibly be referring to Miss Gordon?
Miss Gordon hurried to the door to greet her. William and I were in the kitchen. I motioned to him to come, and we both went quickly to the parlor to discover the source of this exuberance.
“There’s my Marty Girl!” exclaimed our high-spirited guest.
I’d never seen anyone dare to hug Miss Gordon, yet here was a short, generously proportioned woman, head covered with bleached blond curls, pink cheeks, polished crimson fingernails, giving her a bone-crushing hug. Ada’s perfume filled the room, a strong rose aroma that latched on and lingered to our clothing.
“And there’s my quiet little Billy boy!” Ada smothered William with hugs and kisses, which he wiped off dramatically. “Oh Bobby, he’s grown a foot or two since you came to Phoenix last spring to see that doctor. He is adorable. Just adorable!”
Then she spotted me. “And you are Louisa. May I call you Lulu? And please call me Ada. No need to stand on formalities with cousin Ada!” She grabbed me so tightly that she lifted me off of my feet, leaving me breathless. And off she went to explore the house, oohing and aahing over every little detail.
I looked at Robert in genuine astonishment. “And she’s really, truly a Gordon?” I whispered.
“Yes, of course,” he answered, as if anyone could ever doubt the family resemblance. “Well, less so after she married her third husband, a Greek fellow. Teodor Stephanopolos. Teddy, she called him. He was her favorite husband.”
Just then, Ada called down to Robert from the top of the stairs. “Bobby, would you be a lamb and bring up my suitcases to this charming little boudoir?”
Robert picked up the suitcases and looked back at me. “Cousin Ada can really kiss the Blarney Stone.” He stopped himself. “Sorry. I meant that she can be very persuasive. Just…just be careful,” he warned with a smile.
No sooner had he finished that sentence than Dog came charging into the parlor, barking and sniffing, let in the kitchen door by William. He skidded to a halt in front of one of Ada’s pieces of baggage: a small crate with a little wire window on one end. From the crate erupted a terrible hissing and clawing sound.
Things were definitely getting interesting in the Gordon household.
Ada talked endlessly about everything and had more enthusiasm for life than anyone I’d ever known. She and her Teddy had traveled the world, in between world wars, and she could wax ecstatic over any country.
“Oh! Africa! The wildlife! The scenery!” Then she would launch into a riveting story about being on safari. “Oh! Egypt! The pyramids! The Sphinx!�
�� And she would regale us with fascinating stories about the pharaohs buried with their riches, still waiting for their heavenly reward.
At least, I thought her tales were fascinating. Miss Gordon, I noticed, seemed less enamored.
When Robert informed Ada that I had studied classical piano, I thought she would nearly faint. She couldn’t get enough of my playing. “Oh, Marty Girl, you don’t realize what kind of treasure you have, living here with you in Copper Springs.” Ada was an enthusiastic patron of the arts. A board member, she often reminded us, of the illustrious Phoenix Symphony.
I don’t think Marty Girl had ever given much thought to my piano playing before Ada’s visit, other than how the sound annoyed her. Yet, unwittingly influenced by cousin Ada’s zeal for music, I even caught Miss Gordon humming a selection I had played. I played more of the piano in that week than I had since Robert had purchased it from Betty Drummond.
“Darling Lulu,” Ada would exclaim. “Let’s have another concert tonight!” I played as many pieces as I could play from memory: Handel, Haydn, Brahms, Schumann, and Schubert, including all of the compositions from my new Mendolssohn book.
“Any Wagner, dearest?”
“No! Not Wagner,” I said. “I refuse to play Richard Wagner’s works. Hitler idolized him for his relationship with Nietzsche and for his anti-Semitic beliefs. I won’t play Wagner.”
“Of course. My apologies,” quelled Ada. “Well, could you play any Tchaikovsky? I just love Russian composers. Oh, the angst of the Russians!”
“No.”
“Italians? Rossini’s ‘William Tell Overture?’ Vivaldi? Scaflatti? Oh, the passion of the Italians!”
I shook my head.
“Any French? Claude Debussy? Chopin?” Her voice trailed off.
“No. Definitely not Chopin. He was Polish. Poland was one of the first countries Hitler took over. Hitler only allowed the study of German composers in University. Well, except for Mozart. He was Austrian, but Hitler quickly adopted Mozart after he invaded Austria in the Anschluss.”
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