Twisted River

by Kelsey Gietl

  “Will she manage?” Maggie asked Mr. Frye as his sister responded to Karl’s questions with one-word answers and cast sour looks at her brother.

  Mr. Frye rubbed a hand along the back of his neck. “Oh assured. She’s tougher than she appears.” He turned his attention to Reuben, although he continued to glance at Damaris every few seconds.

  Reuben grinned. “Nice seeing you outside of the Mid-Mississippi, Mr. Frye. Smithson couldn’t have been more impressed with the work you sent on Friday.”

  The photographer offered Reuben the same relaxed smile he had bestowed on Maggie coupled with a much firmer handshake. “I’ve read your obituaries. Never read anything like them.” He spit out a dry laugh. “You should write mine when I’m six feet under.”

  “Yes, well ...” Reuben fixed Maggie with those chocolate eyes that almost made her lose herself once. “Dead or alive, we all deserve a good story, do we not?”

  She had said the same words to him the day they met about people in the cemetery and the extraordinary lives they might have led. Then two years passed, and she discovered womanhood far quicker than perhaps she should have. She fought the urge to press a hand to her abdomen.

  “We should take the photograph,” she murmured. “Isn’t that what Mr. Frye’s here for?”

  Reuben broke his stare. “Of course. I’ll find the others.” He hurried from the room as though wild horses drove him there.

  “Is everything all right? You’re pale.” Mr. Frye eyed her warily, as though she might combust before his eyes, and he would need to devise an alibi. The thought surprisingly brought a chuckle past her lips.

  “Haven’t your parents taught you it’s of the utmost rudeness to comment on a lady’s poor complexion?” She floated to a spot behind the sofa where the light would accent all her best features. “Better, Mr. Frye?”

  “Much. You hardly appear ill at all.”

  Her rebuttal, and their exchange, were effectively silenced as Elsa and Karl relieved Damaris and settled themselves onto the sofa. Winnie bounced down beside her parents while Fred and Emil stepped into place behind them. With their sun-streaked blond hair, the Kisch family made a perfect summer’s picture. When Reuben and Tena entered the room a moment later, Maggie’s sister immediately claimed the seat beside Elsa, leaving Reuben to stand next to Maggie.

  “Did I hear Mr. Frye say you’re ill?” he whispered as he moved into place beside her.

  “Why is everyone always asking me that?” she hissed.

  Reuben shrugged. “You do appear fatigued.”

  “I’m perfectly well, thank you.” Her eyes narrowed at the photographer rather than look at Reuben. Now positioned behind the larger camera on the tripod, Mr. Frye craned his neck around the box and gestured for Fred to shift slightly right.

  “Are these photographs not usually completed with the deceased in the room?” Fred asked with his usual haughty air that made even the most tolerant person want to throttle him. “The Fontaine Gazette featured it once.”

  “Fred?” Emil spoke up. “Can I see your spectacles? I think there’s dirt on them.”

  Fred carefully removed his glasses, holding them up to the light. “I do not see anything.”

  Leaning into his brother’s personal space, Emil tilted his head in an effort to see better. He nodded. “My mistake, Freddie. It wasn’t dirt. That was just you being a pompous fiddlehead.”

  “Emil!” Karl growled. Emil smirked, but conceded to silence.

  With a frown, Fred returned his spectacles to his face. “Mr. Frye, am I not correct? The body is usually in the room for these sessions?”

  The photographer dipped his head and twisted another knob on the camera. His hand slipped twice before he succeeded. “Um, yes, that’s correct.”

  “Where is Charles’s body?” Winnie asked her mother. “We had the funeral at the church, but when will we see him?”

  Silence filled the room and everyone looked around at no one in particular. Damaris backed so far against the dining room wall that she might have melted straight through it if physics allowed. Mr. Frye tapped the edge of his camera as though it actually required adjustment. Rather than spare a glance at anyone else, Maggie’s eyes cast down at the top of Tena’s head while her sister stared resolutely into her lap.

  Karl applied a gentle kiss to his daughter’s brow. “There is no body, liebe. They buried your brother at sea.”

  “Why?”

  “Sometimes that is what they must do with those who die in the ocean. They allow them to rest right where they were.”

  “Oh.” Winnie nodded, resting her head against her father’s arm. “It’s awful when you don’t see the body, Papa.”

  “It’s still as awful when you do,” Tena whispered.

  Reaching across his wife to pat Tena’s arm, Karl cleared his throat with a nod to Mr. Frye. “Please proceed, sir. Pretend we are any other family you might photograph.”

  Maggie stared directly into the polished circle in the front of the camera, ignoring the outsider watching her “family” from the other side. The Archers had no photographs together. If they took one at her father’s funeral, neither Tena nor her mother ever mentioned it, and it wouldn’t have mattered. Maggie wasn’t there. She had nothing to remember him by.

  Nothing except the untold secrets Laurence Archer left her.

  The man with the blazing hair held up a hand to count down the time remaining. She gripped the cream upholstered sofa with both hands, and not one of them smiled.

  “It’ll be fine, Maggie,” Reuben whispered through his teeth. “We’ll all be fine again someday.” His foot nudged hers, invisible from the camera, yet sending her into a spiraling breakdown. Moisture burned her eyes, but she forced herself not to move, lest she blur the photograph.

  Mr. Frye’s pinky folded into his fist. “All finished,” he said. Reuben quickly shifted away.

  Karl leapt off the sofa with a clap of his hands. “Enough somberness. Let us get to the Zuckerkuchen.” He nodded to Mr. Frye and Damaris in turn. “You are most welcome to stay for the meal.”

  The photographer nodded despite the greenish tint his sister’s face had taken on. “We would be delighted. Thank you, Mr. Kisch.”

  “Cake before the meal, Papa?” Winnie asked hopefully.

  Elsa accepted her husband’s hand as he helped her from the sofa. “Only this once, Winnie.”

  Winnie cheered at the same time Emil did. She fought her brother to be first into the dining room and ultimately lost.

  “Close, but no cigar, little sister!” Emil cried.

  “Yuck!” Winnie grimaced. “You can keep the cigar. I’ll help myself to your share of the cake.”

  Fred rolled his eyes. “I am supremely thankful I do not live here every day.”

  “Not as glad as we are!” Emil called from the dining room. “I’m eating your piece too, Freddie!”

  Reuben palmed the door, pushing past Fred. “Not if I eat it first.”

  “We raised a pack of wolves,” Karl commented to his wife as they followed the rowdy bunch, the door swinging shut behind them. Not even Tena lingered.

  Exhaustion struck Maggie to the sofa as though she hadn’t slept for nine hours the previous night. She flipped her legs up, stretching out into the corner to rest her forearm across her eyes, effectively able to dry her tears without Mr. Frye or his sister noticing.

  “Hugh, must we stay for lunch?” Damaris asked.

  “I figured so,” returned Mr. Frye. “You go on. I’ll finish packing this up.” Her severe footsteps moved away and the living room momentarily flooded with noisy table chatter as Damaris entered the dining room.

  Maggie didn’t move. She closed her eyes beneath the warm skin of her forearm and tried to imagine herself where she most desired to be—lounging in the cool shade of their garden in Fontaine, softly blowing steam from a cup of Earl Grey while she and Tena enjoyed an idle Sunday afternoon. Not speaking, but not because they were on the outs. It would be a comfortable
silence, content merely to be in the other’s presence. How long would it take to find that comfort again?

  “Zuckerkuchen?” Mr. Frye’s voice emerged from somewhere near the center of the room, successfully dislodging her daydream.

  “God bless you. Do trouble Mr. Kisch for a handkerchief.”

  “Zuckerkuchen is German funeral cake,” he explained. Amusement lined his tone, and she could hear his smile when he added, “If you were curious.”

  “My curiosity of the German tongue does not extend that far.” Nudging her arm above her eyes, she caught him staring down into a small rectangular black box she could only assume was another camera. “Are you German too?” she asked. “I swear everyone I meet lately is German.”

  He flipped a lever on the box and it clicked. He looked up at her through paper thin lashes. “I don’t rightly know. Aren’t we all Americans anyway? What good is causing division?”

  “Then how do you know about zuckercaak?”

  “Zuckerkuchen,” he corrected. He placed the lid on the larger of the two camera cases and nudged it against the wall with his foot. “When you photograph enough funerals in a city ripe with Germans, you learn things.”

  She lowered her arm from her face. “Well, I say offer me a fine Brit any day.”

  “They certainly do speak prettier.”

  Mr. Frye’s eyes were back on the small camera held against his stomach. He flipped the lever again, and from her current angle, she could see the metal plates inside spiral open then closed. “Are you taking photographs of me, Mr. Frye?”

  “What do you know about cameras?”

  “Nothing.”

  A smile edged his lips. The metal plates irised again. “Then no.”

  FIVE

  halfway through Reuben’s Zuckerkuchen, Maggie and Hugo finally joined them in the dining room. Despite bloodshot eyes and her earlier anxious bout during the photographs, she seemed to have returned to her old self, chin held high and fighting a smile at something Hugo must have also found highly amusing. His low chuckle carried as they took the two adjoining seats between Damaris and Elsa and across from Tena and himself. Damaris leaned over to whisper something in her brother’s ear, and he adamantly shook his head.

  Today hadn’t been anything like either of Reuben’s parents’ funerals. When his mother died, no one attended except for Reuben, his father, Tena, and the Kischs. By that point, everyone else had heard of his mother’s affliction and few seemed to understand that madness couldn’t be caught as easily as the flu. Instead, they spied on the funeral procession through cracked doorways, and Reuben’s father barely spoke even to his son. When Harris Radford died two months later, Reuben sat with Charles afterwards in near silence.

  But here the atmosphere seemed light, almost cheery. Elsa served the cake, Tena assisted with the mid-day meal, and everyone ate until they were stuffed full. Still, there were leftovers for the icebox. This camaraderie was exactly what the family needed.

  When the last fork settled on the table, Tena’s head drooped against Reuben’s shoulder. “I don’t think I’ve ever been this tuckered out, and it’s only two in the afternoon. You’ll either need to carry me upstairs or stretch me out across the table and throw a blanket over me.”

  “You’ll make a lovely centerpiece,” Reuben said as her eyes closed.

  Emil reached over him to poke Tena in the forehead. “You can sleep when you’re old.”

  Tena groaned. She flicked his hand away and didn’t bother opening her eyes. “I feel old already.”

  “No sleeping yet, Tena girl,” Karl soothed. He made for the sideboard, extracted a bottle of Port wine from the lower cabinet, then transferred nine small glasses to the table as he spoke. “None of us would consider Charles fond of spirits, and I am thankful my son was wise in that respect; however, by the same token I doubt he would reprimand any of us for having a drink or two today.”

  Uncorking the bottle, he poured an ample amount into each glass and passed them around the table. Reuben took two, then nudged Tena until she sat up straight and reached for the drink.

  Elsa declined when her husband attempted to fill her glass last. “I have not drank alcohol since we left Bayern, Karl. I am not about to begin now.” Karl nodded, setting the bottle onto the table to pick up his own glass.

  With a sigh, Emil reached across the table to nick the bottle and poured a shot into the last glass. He slid it towards his mother’s clasped hands. “Do it for Charles, Mama. Just this once.”

  Her fingers lingered against the glass as she stared down into the dark liquid then nodded resolutely. Standing beside her husband, she raised her glass to the group. “For Charles. Just this once.” Then she downed the glass with barely a flinch at the taste.

  “For Charles,” came the resounding reply as the rest of the circle, minus Winnie, emptied their glasses.

  “But not just this once,” Emil murmured to Reuben, elbowing him in the ribs.

  Reuben held his glass out for Karl to refill. “Charles and I really were a wonderful influence on you, weren’t we?”

  Emil laid a hand over his heart. “Corrupting the innocent youth. It was a raw task, but someone had to do it.”

  Winnie nearly bounced out of her chair. “When do I get corrupted? Emil, tell Papa to let me have a drink.”

  Karl narrowed his eyes at his daughter. “Winifred, I told you no this morning and your mother agreed.”

  “But I’m halfway through eleven. Emil was probably younger than me when he had his first drink!”

  “That’s accurate,” Emil admitted. “I was nine. Smoked cigars too.”

  “Emil!” Elsa gasped at the same time Winnie’s face lit up. “See! See! Now let me have some.”

  “Really, Mama,” said Emil, “you didn’t know what we boys were up to when we stayed up late? Charles was five years older than me. Seriously, who do you think taught me how to distinguish the good cigars from the lousy ones? Sorry, mum, but your precious Charles corrupted us all.”

  “Not me,” Fred stated with head held high.

  “Of course, not you.” With an exaggerated eye roll at his brother, Emil slid his near-empty glass towards Winnie. “Here you go, sis. Enjoy.”

  Karl snatched the glass from Winnie’s reaching fingers and set it on the sideboard. “Winifred, have you finished your meal?”

  “Yes, Papa, but—”

  “Then you are dismissed.”

  “But, Papa!”

  “Winifred.”

  “Fine.” Winnie stood with a huff. “I always miss all the fun.” The door banged against the wall as she pushed through it.

  Fred tapped his fingers against his still nearly full glass. “You do know she will ask Emil for some later, right?”

  “Way to throw me under the trolley, Freddie,” Emil muttered. He rocked his chair back so he could make a rude gesture under the table.

  Reuben stifled his laughter before Karl’s stern expression could swing in his direction. He tapped his glass towards Fred. “Why don’t you say a few words about Charles, Fred? Then we can go around the table.”

  Fred stood up and for once didn’t maintain his usual obnoxious swagger. He adjusted his spectacles and barely managed to lift his glass without it slipping back to the table. His thumbs tapped nervously against the side. “I am not one for sentimentality. It is no secret that my brother and I were not close.” He took another sip, swallowing twice. “He should not be forced to provide false compliments were I the one lost, so I think it best if I do him the same honor.”

  Emil leaned over to Reuben and made another rude gesture. “Leave it to Freddie to be boorish towards the dead.” He snorted mid drink, inhaling his alcohol and being reduced to a coughing fit.

  Throwing a deep scowl in Emil’s direction, Fred set his drink down without finishing it and moved between his parents, wrapping an arm around each of them. “I believe it is time for me to leave. I will ring when I make it back.” He bent down to kiss his mother. “Ich hab’ dic
h lieb, Mama.”

  “We love you too, son. Be safe.”

  “I will.” With a final nod to the room and a glance that didn’t quite reach his brother, Fred extracted himself from the house through the front door.

  Emil leapt up, holding his glass high like he won a first prize trophy. “Well, it’s my turn and we all know I am by far the wittiest one here. So, now that Herr Killjoy has left the premises, can I just say on my brother’s behalf that Charles was friggin’ brilliant?”

  “Language, Emil,” Elsa cautioned, but her reprimand was only half forced.

  “As I said,” Emil continued, “Charles was a superior brother. He stuck up for me when Freddie thought a nine-year-old shouldn’t smoke or drink—”

  “Which one should not,” Karl growled. “Had I known…”

  “We would have done it anyway, Pop.” Emil continued, “But Charles also taught me what it means to—” His voice caught and he took a drink to steady himself. He turned misty eyes on Tena. “He taught me what it means to love someone, Tena. Charles died for you, and I can think of no one more deserving.” He raised his glass in her direction. “To Tena, for being the best thing my brother ever had and the only thing he ever wanted.”

  Six voices chimed in, “To Tena,” and Elsa finished with, “Thank you, dear, for making my son the happiest he ever was.” For a woman who never drank, she finished the rest of hers in record speed and doled out another round. “Reuben, please say something before I become emotional.”

  Reuben reached for his glass only to find his arm trapped beneath the table, locked inside Tena’s firm grasp. She gripped his forearm, knuckles as white against his shirt as the sleeve itself and only a touch lighter than the complexion she now wore. Twisting his wrist, he slipped his fingers between hers, using his opposite hand to lift the glass to his lips.

  “What’s the matter?” he whispered around the rim. “Should we go somewhere else?”

  Tena gave a thin shake of her head, her lips pressed together as though opening them would release the seven levels of Hades. Reuben suspected that was the answer to both his questions. He stayed in his chair, uncertain how to proceed.