Attempting to share the feelings of unreality which had engulfed me for so many months. I stemmed the tide of lament with a question. “You’re quite sure that his mother won’t be back?”
“I have written many letters—many letters and no replies. She lived in Hamburg. I was told the bombing there was very heavy. The War has disrupted postal communications, but the last three letters were returned. After her husband died, she left France because her parents urged her to move back home. Already in Germany, even before this, this,” the speaker hesitated, groping for an image graphic enough to describe the occupation of France, “This desecration of our soil with German boots, there was a persecution of the Jewish people. Hilda feared her baby’s blood would subject them to difficulty with the government.”
The nun sighed, remembering a mother’s anguish over abandoning an infant who represented the last tie with a husband, the only glimmer of light on the darkness of a Nazi horizon. Hastily dismissing the unpleasantness, she continued. “But he is handsome and healthy, and already very quick at his lessons.”
I was aware that Sister Theresa was speaking so urgently because she was afraid. Afraid that this must-be-wealthy-because-she’s-an-American woman would leave without solving the problem, solve it by removing another mouth to feed when funds were so scarce. The woolen material of my best dress chafed across my shoulders.
The directrice continued to sing the child’s praises, while, unheeding, I turned to glance at the empty chair beside me. David should be sitting there, spruce and handsome in his blue uniform, smiling as he had when he waved good-bye to me at the train station. But because a burning plane had gone down into the cool waters of the English Channel, the chair remained vacant.
“May I see him?” I cut into the babble of assurances about the quality of the food and care given each child, my level tone concealing the painful squeeze in my chest which made it difficult to draw a breath.
The nun allowed an expression of immense relief to whisk across her scrubbed features and glanced at the clock. An important plateau had been reached; I could almost read her thoughts. It would have been much easier to refuse the child without having to watch him taste the possible rejection.
She rose. “Come, they will be at their recreation.”
Sister Theresa whisked me out of the barren little room and into a dark corridor as though afraid her visitor would change her mind summarily and sail back to America. Dropping little personal tidbits behind her like the bread crumb trail left for Hansel and Gretel, the nun led the way. “He was only three months old when his mother left him with us. His birthday is in December. He will be six.”
The gray and white robes whispered over the stone floor, worn smooth by the passage of many tiny feet. I could not shake the sensation of participating in a play, as though another woman inhabited my body, spoke confidently in response to questions. My only acting experience had been in the town pageant two years ago and in the trauma of confronting friends and neighbors across the stage, I had forgotten my speech. I needed David at my side to throw me the lifeline of my next cue; his letter had placed this burden upon me. Each phrase of that letter was burned into my memory; I could recite it word for word, close my eyes and see his scrawls across the tablet page.
“Darling Jenny, the strangest and most wonderful thing happened today! Our jeep broke down in a town near Vichy and we had to wait hours for the parts from the base. I heard children laughing and looked over a stone wall and into an orphanage play yard. The orphanage is run by Catholic nuns and they invited us in. There was one baby lying in a basket on the grass, chuckling at a secret joke. I went over to share it with him and one of the sisters who spoke English told me that the baby’s mother had left him and moved back to Germany. His father was a Jew who’d been killed in a car accident a few months after the baby was born. He had the most startling blue eyes, Jen, just like mine. I held him for a long time and he fell asleep. I know we promised my father that we’d have lots of grandsons to help run the farm, but it wouldn’t hurt to get a head start on our family. If his mother doesn’t come back, his life will be very hard because of his mixed heritage. I fell in love with him, Jen, he was so trusting and brave. When the parts for the jeep came, they had to pry his fingers away from my uniform lapel, but he didn’t cry. I promised him I would be back after the war to get him and left collateral to reassure him. When we wed, you promised to give me your heart. I left half of it in those clutching baby fingers. His name is Simon.”
The remembrance of David’s earnestness plus the fact that it was the last letter received before the somber telegram, which began, “The War Department regrets...” filled my eyes with tears and I blinked them away. Ever since I had first realized that David wasn’t coming home with a duffel bag slung over his shoulder and a crooked smile on his dear, familiar features, an anger mixed with a throbbing loss filled my being.
David’s parents had been wonderful, never once revealing the sorrow generated from allowing David’s new bride, a constant reminder of his absence, to remain in their home. Determined to make a new beginning, I had continued in my teaching job at the school, tutoring pupils at night whenever possible, saving with the grim obsession of a miser.
An announcement over the potato soup one evening of my intention to sail to France and adopt Simon had startled Mother Holverson into dropping a platter. The thick china had splintered over the floor, while the words held inside for many months poured over the confines of the dam of reserve.
“No, Jenny! That’s just foolishness! How can you take on that responsibility? You’re still just a child yourself! How will you live? Do you expect to stay here? People will talk, say that it’s David’s child you’ve brought back. He’s part German, isn’t he? There will be hard feelings from the neighbors, everyone knows someone who was killed... Foolishness, foolishness! A child! Jennifer, you must reconsider. Think of our position...”
Think of my pain! Was that the anguished cry beneath the torrent of rambling words? A grandmother’s dreams for David’s family had already been destroyed; she could not bear the thought of loving and losing another child.
David’s father had said nothing, his weather-seamed features remaining non-committal. When the news came of David’s death, Father Holverson’s reaction had been to walk out to the field to finish plowing after comforting his two women.
David had inherited his father’s gift of acceptance; compassion ran still and deep within Father Halverson. When I went up to my bedroom after helping to wash the supper dishes, there was a rusted soup can on the dressing table. It was filled with silver dollars and a few gold pieces, Jonathon Holverson’s retirement money, formerly buried in the safeness of the back yard by the well house instead of entrusted to a bank, unearthed as a mute testimony of his support.
There was much to do and no time for tears. Three months later found me clad in one of the dresses I had stitched together after the day’s chores were done, numbly trailing the authoritative figure of the directrice into the soft May sunshine, my quest almost at an end. The long days spent on the ship, the indifference of strangers and the sleepless nights were forgotten in the anticipation of meeting Simon.
There were over twenty children playing in the huge fenced-in area, rapid French shattering the pace, voices raised in shrieks of glee and anger as they fought over battered toys and hurtled themselves about in the joyous abandon of youth.
My strained nerves flinched at the uproar; although accustomed to the chatter of classroom, I realized that I had been mentally prepared for rows of sweet orphans singing rounds, with a spotlight on a baby lying in a basket on the grass. A golden haze should surround the children, with perhaps a sprinkling of violets to add color to the scene. But Simon was no longer a baby and this wasn’t one of the musicals I had loved to attend on David’s arm; there would be no bright and happy ending filled with song.
A child with a smudged face tore past in pursuit of another taunting sprite, dodging around m
y stiff, apprehensive figure with arrogant ease.
The directrice halted her brisk stride and surveyed the surging, healthy rabble with pride. I spotted Simon first, my gaze drawn to an aloof island surrounded by a turbulent sea.
He stood by the wall, his hands busy in the rhythmic action of tossing a ball against the stones and catching it. He held himself proudly, a short and sturdy five year old, bouncing a ball.
The boy, my boy, turned with a defiant air as we approached. Simon had already discovered that life would be hard, that he would be scorned and called names, his parents reviled as German lovers—Jew lovers by the older children. His parentage was a dark stain on his record, blotting out any possibility of adoption. I could sense the hopeless despair which filled him.
Awaiting rebuke for not joining in with the others, Simon studied my hesitant figure standing behind the directrice with a defensive curiosity which I understood. So far, he had only been viewed by potential adoptive parents with pity or revulsion—not love.
“Simon, this is Jennifer Holverson. She’s come all the way from America to see you!” The nun’s voice carried the magic word over the roar which was instantly switched off as children spun to eye my foreign looking skirt and coat, the straight fall of wheat colored hair to my shoulders.
Murmurs of awe, “America!” were audible from the older children. Simon waited in stony silence, refusing to raise hopes that might be dashed, ignoring, I suddenly realized, the wisps of daydreams that had so often clothed him with two parents and a loving home.
I couldn’t take my gaze from the dark features that must have been his father’s legacy, the startlingly blue eyes which had captured David’s attention.
Noting the sullen air of the rebel, I was suddenly flooded with the realization that this would not be easy. We shared many hidden scars, those of loneliness, helpless anger and fear of what the future might bring. He carried German blood in his veins, and I was jolted by a surge of white-hot fury at those who had murdered my David.
Loving Simon would mean abandoning the anger which still gripped my spirit at the shattering of a sparkling future, the betrayal of my own dreams. Mother Holverson had been right—I hadn’t thought this mad project through. My only goal had been to see David once more in the person of Simon, fulfilling David’s promise to an infant in order to selfishly find peace.
Sensing my withdrawal, Simon turned back to his solitary game. The thud of the ball had a desolate sound which echoed in my already aching heart. I remembered David’s laughing words on paper that he had entrusted a portion of my heart promised him on our wedding day to Simon’s keeping. Perhaps this division was responsible for my inability to heal those wounds of grief and despair or to look to the future with hope.
Suddenly, it was as though David’s strong arm was around me once more, his tender support sweeping away my uncertainty. Raising Simon would be difficult. It would mean laying aside my sorrow and self-pity, placing Simon’s welfare first, forgiving the legacy of hatred which he would bring to the peaceful farm. Buy my days were barren and meaningless without David. Part of my soul had been buried with David on foreign soil, the rest was clutched in the grimy fingers of the boy before me.
“I would like to adopt Simon. Please start the paperwork immediately.” My voice sounded loud and confident, conveying the promise to the listening ears of the boy’s tormentors that he was wanted, that wonders would be accomplished and he would go to America.
His body stiffened at the words; disbelief struggled with hope across his features. Revealing a desperate yearning for acceptance, Simon took a hesitant step nearer his rescuer and paused. The universe had shrunk around us, walling off the curious stares of the children and the shepherding nuns.
Intense blue eyes locked with the brown gaze of a woman from Kansas, a silent message passing between us as I extended my hand.
“I need you, Simon,” I confided softly. “You see, you have half of my heart.”
THE END
Short and Sweet
Ever since my father announced that he had enrolled in clown college, the words, “I have a surprise for you”, ties my stomach into the knots first formed when he chaperoned my fourth grade Halloween party. I remember cringing while watching my parent demonstrate the proper technique of bobbing for apples. His hairy legs stuck out from under a sheet toga, a vegetable grater hung on a cord around his neck and he wore a name tag reading “Alex”.
“What!” he bellowed, when one of my classmates timidly inquired who he was supposed to be. “You kids never heard of Alexander the Great?”
Thirty years later, I found myself doing deep breathing exercises to stave off an anxiety attack as I turned my car into Dad’s driveway. My sister, Ellen, had declined to accompany me on the feeble grounds of keeping her two youngest children from scratching their chicken pox.
Smelling faintly of pizza, although it was barely 9:00 a.m., my father met me at the door and enveloped me in the traditional bear hug which had so disastrously rearranged my upswept hairdo the night of my senior prom.
“Glad you could come, Sweet Charlotte.”
In supplying the information for my birth certificate, Dad had been struck by the way that combination of names fell on the ear—like Diamond and Jim as he later explained to my horrified mother. Instead of the innocuous Charlotte Ann, I am lumbered with the title of a Bette Davis movie.
With his arm draped around my shoulders, he steered me into the house. “Take a load off your legs, honey. I’ll bring in the surprise.”
My brain feverishly interpreted his words. The surprise at least was a solid object. I eliminated his having taken up hang gliding, opened a Greek restaurant or entered a lumberjack competition. Whatever it was, I wouldn’t be surprised. Shocked out of my socks, perhaps ...
He bustled into the kitchen and the subsequent rustling noises conjured up images of a mouse trapped in a filing cabinet. My father was a retired carpenter, but insisted on popping out of society’s confines of retirement with the unexpectedness of a jack-in-the-box.
“Close your eyes!” Dad’s thinning hair had surrendered to advancing years, but his vocal projection remained undaunted.
I obeyed, thankful that long exposure had proven my heart capable of withstanding shocks of up to 6.8 on the Richter scale.
“Sweet Charlotte, meet Sugar.”
Sugar? Wasn’t that the name of the waitress he’d brought over for Thanksgiving dinner last year, the one who demonstrated her ability to chew gum and turkey at the same time? No, he couldn’t have ...
My eyes snapped open and I recoiled, a disoriented Alice watching her toes recede into the distance in Wonderland. Patting the arm of my chair, I tried to reassure myself that the chair hadn’t shrunk to doll house size beneath me.
I was nose to nose with the Tom Thumb of the equine world. I blinked. Chestnut coat, four legs, ears, mane, silky tail. A full grown horse that barely measured up to Dad’s brass belt buckle.
My father chuckled. I think he has convinced himself over the years that I assume these grotesque expressions of disbelief solely for his amusement.
“Ain’t she a beaut? Her fancy name is Bambi’s Sugar and Spice.”
I pointed a quivering finger. “Dad, that’s a horse!”
“From the moment when as a mere babe in arms you called your Uncle Frank “Uncle Fink”, I knew no one was ever gonna pull the wool over your eyes, Sweet Charlotte.”
I forced a question through gritted teeth. “Where did you get this animal?”
“You oughta get out of the house more, girl! A miniature horse show was at the fairgrounds this weekend and Sugar’s owner keeled over from a bad ticker. His daughter—reminded me of you, dear—showed up and wanted to get rid of the ‘beast’ immediately.”
“A horse? In the house?”
“Now you sound like your mother, God rest her blessed soul. This little gal lets me sleep late, brings in the morning paper and, if she’ll pardon the pun, don’t nag. Can’t say
that ‘bout most women.”
Dad glanced around at the comfortably untidy living room, the newspapers strewn across the sofa, pipe tobacco spilled on the coffee table and the chess board set up for his weekly match with Doc Sims. “’Tain’t noticed she’s disrupted my housekeepin’ much.”
“Is she housetrained?”
“Back yard’s fenced in.” His eyes almost disappeared into laugh crinkles.
“I suppose you cut a pet door in the kitchen?”
Sarcasm bounced off Dad like pebbles flung against a rhino’s hide. “She lifts the latch with her teeth and lets herself out. Sugar loves to do tricks. Bow, Sugar.”
The thistledown delicate creature bobbed her head.
“Tell Sweet Charlotte your age.”
The tapping of a hoof which appeared no bigger than a pencil eraser next to Dad’s size fourteen work boots informed me that his new housemate was two years old.
My fond parent nudged me. “Hold out your hand.”
Dating from an unfortunate experience at summer camp involving a mare with teeth the size of a bear trap, I have conceded the right-of-way to horses. Now my own flesh and blood expected me to offer my fingers within easy chomping range.
Realizing Eric would laugh himself into an aneurysm upon hearing that his wife had shown fear of this miniscule beastie, (and believe me, Dad would tell him all the details), I held out my hand and, through great effort, managed to keep it from quivering.
“Shake, Sugar,” Dad commanded.
Sugar began a shimmying dance, wiggling her hips and shoulders in time to inaudible music. This time my stunned expression almost brought Dad to his knees in hysteria.
“It’s a joke, see, sweetie? You think she’s gonna hold her hoof up like a dog does his paw, but instead Sugar shakes her whole body. Isn’t it a hoot?”
“A hoot and a half,” I murmured in feeble agreement.
Love Has The Best Intentions Page 10