by Sarah McCoy
Molasses sweet and spicy. Lillian let it dissolve on her tongue and slip down her throat. “It’s good.”
He kissed her forehead. “Don’t tell Oma. She’ll be cross with me for giving you treats before bed.”
She smiled. She was good at keeping secrets.
That night, Oma sat up in Lillian’s room darning her wool school stockings. Lillian’s feet were cold beneath her bed covers, and she wanted to hear a story.
“Would you lie with me a little, Oma? I can’t sleep yet,” pleaded Lillian. She knew she was too old for bedtime stories, but hoped Oma would relent.
Oma sighed, set down her needle and thread, and slipped beneath the covers.
Lillian laced her feet between hers.
“You’re freezing, child!” Oma fluffed the blankets around them.
“Are you excited for Christmas?” asked Lillian.
“Ja,” said Oma. “Are you?”
Lillian tucked the covers under her chin and nodded. “Do you think we’ll get a letter from Tante Elsie?”
Oma pulled Lillian into the crook of her arm. “She always writes on Christmas.”
Lillian knew that to be true but wanted Oma’s reassurance.
“I bought the carp today. Fat as a giant pinecone. Did you see?”
Lillian shook her head. “But I did see Opa making our lebkuchen hearts.” She giggled and buried her face against Oma.
“Did you now.” Oma took a deep breath, her body rising and falling heavily.
“Do you think Julius will mind if I have his, since he’s staying at school this year?”
“You’ll have to ask Opa,” replied Oma. “Now, all warm. It is time for sleeping.” She leaned forward to stand, but Lillian stopped her.
“Don’t go yet, please. Would you read to me—the letter about the day Tante Elsie helped Onkel Albert at the hospital? The one where she gave a candy stripe to the boy with a broken arm.”
“Candy striper. In America, they are like nurses, but their job is to comfort the sick,” explained Oma. She reached beneath the mattress for where they kept the wad of letters. “What was the date?”
“It was summer,” said Lillian. “Because she said they had their first summer storm that cracked flaming icicles across the sky.” Her heart sped up reciting Elsie’s words. “The boy had been so scared, he fell off his chair and broke his arm.”
“Ack ja,” said Oma. “It was August, I believe.” She flipped through the envelopes until she found the one. “August 3.” The pages crinkled against her fingers. “Dear Mutti and Lillian,” she began.
Lillian closed her eyes, snuggled down close, and let her imagination drift across the ocean.
56 LUDWIGSTRASSE
GARMISCH, GERMANY
OCTOBER 5, 1967
Dear Tante Elsie,
Thank you again for the McCall’s dress pattern and the Beatles album you sent. We got a new radio station here. It is called the British Broadcasting Corporation. Have you heard of it in America? It plays all the good music, even Jim Morrison. And today, Tony Blackburn (the announcer on Radio 1) was talking about everything that’s going on over there with you. Is it true that American mobs are protesting in the streets? It is hard to imagine, but Oma says it’s the way of war. She worries about you. I explained to her that Vietnam is where the fighting is and that is far away from Texas. Still, she tells me to write you to keep baby Jane and Onkel Albert close by and the doors locked tight.
She would write you as well, but she’s already gone to bed. For the past couple months she’s been sleeping much more than is customary. She didn’t want me to mention it to you before—claiming it was allergies from the change of season and drinking her teas for this or that—but it’s well into fall now and she’s more tired than ever. She fights me about visiting the doctor. I tell her they have pills for almost everything these days, but she refuses. Maybe you could talk to her. Ask Onkel Albert what he thinks.
Other than that, we are well here. Opa is good. Still insisting on making the first batch of brötchen himself even though we’ve hired two trained bakers and one chocolatier. Hugo is the best of the three and the most recently employed. He apprenticed with a pastry chef in the Bishopric of Liège, Belgium, and has added waffles to our menu. I’ve gained five pounds since his arrival and loved every bite of it! In a perfect world, I’d enclose one of Hugo’s waffles with this letter. I’m positive you would love them as much as the rest of us. Business has increased almost 20 percent, and Opa couldn’t dote on the man any more. He loves him like the son he never had.
A gelato shop opened next door—the American tourists and military are crazy for the stuff. So Hugo and Opa are discussing plans to sell waffle cones to the gelateria. Business is booming, and we’re all glad for that.
I asked Opa last night if we turn a good profit by the end of the year, if I might go to university in the spring. I believe I would like to study history or literature. I’m not sure which. In either case, I’ve put it off too long already. In my dreams, I’d come to the United States. There are so many wonderful schools there, but I couldn’t leave Oma and Opa. I’ll probably apply to LMU Munich. Opa said that was a good plan. So now I just need to get in. Pray for me. I want this more than just about anything.
I must go now. I have to sweep the kitchen before bed. It’s not so bad now that I can listen to the radio while I do it!
My love to you, Jane, and Onkel Albert,
Lillian
P.S. I nearly forgot! Julius has finally wed! He sent us word last month. Her name is Klara and she is from Lübeck. Her father is a banker, and so they have moved to Hamburg for Julius to manage the Hamburg Bank. We didn’t get any more detail than that. You know Julius.
56 LUDWIGSTRASSE
GARMISCH, GERMANY
OCTOBER 19, 1967
Dear Tante Elsie,
So much has happened in such a short time, I don’t where to begin. Opa refuses to let me send a telegram or call long distance, so I am mailing this and pray you receive it as fast as humanly possible. We have just returned from the hospital. Oma took a turn for the worse. For three days, she lay in bed without a crumb to eat or sip of tea. I was so frightened that I called the emergency Krankentransporte.
They say it is cancer. Oh, Tante Elsie, if only I had done something months ago! If we had caught it sooner perhaps-.-.-. but now, it is too late. They sent her home, and Opa and I are at her bedside every hour.
I am inconsolable and would never ask this unless it was as dire as it is. Please, come home. The doctor says she could be with us for weeks or a handful of days. Opa refuses to accept the gravity of her prognosis. I don’t think he can imagine his life without her—or will let himself. It will break his heart and mine. I can’t endure this alone. Come back to us.
Faithfully,
Lillian
SCHMIDT BÄCKEREI
56 LUDWIGSTRASSE
GARMISCH, GERMANY
NOVEMBER 2, 1967
Arriving two hours ahead of schedule, Elsie had taken a taxicab from the bahnhof and had it drop her on Ludwigstrasse. It’d been over twenty years since she’d stepped on that street. The clip of her heels against the cobblestone was a cadence her body took to instinctively. The autumn air was crisp and clean as the evergreens, and she breathed it in as deeply as she could. The sky was piebald with thick, gray clouds shrouding the Zugspitze. A single drop of rain wet her cheek but no more. Soon enough the heavens would open up, and she was glad she’d taken the earlier train from Munich.
A young couple exited the bakery with a fat rye loaf wrapped in brown paper. The familiar sign, Schmidt Bäckerei, above the door rocked gently in the Alpine breeze.
“Guten abend.” The cabby handed over her luggage.
“Guten abend,” replied Elsie. The words felt clunky and hard to her ears. It’d been a long while since she’d spoken German outside of whispered lullabies to baby Jane.
A bell chimed as the bakery door opened, but the smell greeted her far be
fore the threshold. A toasty blanket of yeasty goodness. Papa’s recipe. Only his bread made the air so decadent and satisfying. She’d tried to replicate it for years in her own bakery but never quite succeeded, too much vanilla and cinnamon lingering about.
Despite all the years and a handful of modern updates, the Schmidt Bakery was almost exactly as she remembered. The dill had been replanted in a larger pot but still sat in the front window. The breadbaskets lined the shelf exactly as she had organized them. Formica tables replaced the two wooden ones but in the same cramped spots. Here it was again, like a dream restored, and yet not.
“May I help you?” asked a young man behind the register.
Suddenly, she felt awkward and foreign. Her indigo daisy-print blouse and flip hairdo didn’t belong. The part of her that had been Elsie Schmidt remembered this place with tenderness and sorrow, but that girl was like a storybook character in a Grimm fairy tale. Now, she was Elsie Meriwether with a loving husband, a beautiful baby daughter, and her own bakery in the sunny West Texas desert. This was no longer her home, and surprisingly, that realization brought her great comfort and strength.
“Are you Hugo?”
“Nein. I’m Moritz. Hugo is in the back.” He rearranged sweets on a tray—mandelkekse, almond bar cookies, Elsie recognized.
“Is Lillian here?”
Moritz paused, then slid the tray into the glass case. “Are you a friend of the family?”
Elsie felt a twinge. “I am Elsie. Max and Luana’s daughter.”
Moritz’s eyes opened as wide as the bonbons on display. “Ack ja! You are early! Please, please.” He came round from the register. “I am Moritz Schneider.” He extended his hand.
“Schneider?” Elsie smiled and shook. “Any relation to Bitsy Schneider?”
“My mother!” He put a thumb to his chest. “I am her youngest son.”
“I knew her well,” said Elsie. “You kicked her a lot, as I recall.” She patted her abdomen, and Moritz laughed.
“That’s what Frau Schmidt tells me.” At the mention of Mutti, his countenance dropped. “It is good you have come.”
Elsie’s heart stammered beneath her ribs.
“Here,” he said, taking her suitcase. “They are with her.”
He escorted her to a doorway she didn’t recognize; a new wall had been erected officially partitioning the bakery storefront from the kitchen and the stairwell to their living quarters. The second floor had been renovated. The bedroom wall where she’d hidden Tobias had been torn down and the space expanded into a common area with a large television. Mutti and Papa’s bedroom remained as it always had been, but an extension had been added to the far end of the floor. A plank step led up to two opposing doors. Lillian’s and Julius’s bedrooms, Elsie guessed.
She stood by the television’s flickering black-and-white images and thought, This is where I slept and played dress-up with Hazel. She took a step: Where I celebrated my seventeenth birthday with Tobias. Another: Where Major Kremer stood. And another: Where Mutti told me her secrets. This place held so many moments she could never forget and yet, nothing was as it had been.
Moritz set her luggage beside a sofa where the door to her bedroom once arched. He went to Mutti and Papa’s door. “Lillian?” He knocked.
The door cracked open, and Lillian’s face appeared.
“She is here,” said Moritz.
“Tante Elsie?” Lillian whispered and slipped out the opening. “Tante!” She embraced Elsie as though they had lived side by side for all their days. Her shoulders trembled. “I am so grateful to have you with us.”
“There, there,” soothed Elsie. “How is she?”
“No better, but you made it in time.” Lillian wiped the tears away with the back of her hand.
Lillian had sent a handful of snapshots over the years, but this was the first time Elsie had seen her niece in the flesh. The resemblance to Hazel was so extraordinary that the old stitches of Elsie’s mended heart pulled at their seams. Her eyes stung at the vision of her sister reborn.
“You look so much like your mother.” She gripped Lillian—ensuring she was made of matter and not spirit.
Lillian turned her chin down. “I am but a shadow of her.”
“Nein,” said Elsie. “You are the brightest parts.” She wrapped her arms around Lillian again to hide her budding tears.
Lillian took Elsie’s hand in hers. “Come. They’ve been waiting.”
Inside Mutti’s room, the curtains were drawn tight. A small lamp on the night table cast a pink glow over the bed.
“Elsie is here,” announced Lillian.
Mutti’s delicate fingers moved over the edelweiss-embroidered coverlet. “Elsie?”
Elsie’s knees turned to jelly with each step until she could no longer stand. She knelt by the bedside.
“Dear, let me look at you.” Mutti cupped her chin and leaned forward from the shadows.
Her lips were sallow, her face gaunt, and her eyes so dark and tired that it pained Elsie to hold their gaze; but Mutti’s touch was tender, and the smell of her buttery skin, ever the same.
“My beautiful daughter,” she said.
Elsie turned her lips into her palm and kissed it.
“Isn’t she, Max?”
Papa sat on the opposite side of the bed with bowed head.
“Ja, Luana. My girls … the most beautiful in Germany.” He swallowed hard and laced his fingers tight.
“How is my granddaughter Jane?” asked Mutti.
“She is well.” Elsie’s voice broke.
“Strong and healthy?”
Elsie nodded. “She eats me out of lebkuchen.”
Mutti gave a satisfied “Hmm.” Then she said, “I am sorry to have made you leave her and Albert.”
“They are fine. I wanted to come. So did Al, but we were afraid that …” She bit her lip and looked to Papa.
He cleared his throat and stood, his stature so much smaller than in Elsie’s memory. “I will bring us soup. Lillian, help me please.”
Lillian obeyed and followed him out.
Alone, Mutti stroked Elsie’s hair. “I like it down,” she said. “It reminds me of when you and Hazel were young, and I would comb your hair before bed, remember?”
“I have to iron it to get it this way,” Elsie sniffled. “Otherwise it is wavy and crimped. Hazel’s hair was like silk, so straight and fine.”
“You have your papa’s hair. When it makes up its mind to stand up in the morning, you will not get it to lie back down the rest of the day. Vitality.” She grinned. “Hazel had my hair and look at it now”—she softly touched her temple—“limp and lifeless. All I can do is braid back and hide the bald spots.”
Though she tried to keep it steady, Elsie’s breath came in ragged snippets.
“That was not funny. I know, I know,” Mutti comforted, and she opened the bedsheet a ways. “Come, lie beside me.”
Elsie slipped out of her matching blue pumps and spooned Mutti. Her body was angular, reedy thin, and colder than it should’ve been beneath the wool comforter. Elsie hugged herself to her mother and rubbed stocking feet against Mutti’s bare ones.
“I’ve missed my girls,” Mutti whispered and kissed Elsie’s head.
Against her chest, Elsie counted each heartbeat and prayed for the next, and the next, and the next. She could contain her grief no longer.
“I’m sorry I stayed away so long,” said Elsie.
“Hush, dear. I never blamed you for doing what you felt was right and best. I have always admired that in you. I wish I had a cup of your courage. Perhaps things would have been different for our family.”
“You are the strongest woman I’ve ever known.”
“Doch, look in the mirror, and you will see the strongest Schmidt.” She leaned in close to Elsie’s ear. “And those are your papa’s words.”
Elsie hugged her tight and wished the moment could be suspended for all eternity.
“Before I go,” said Mutti, “there ar
e things I need you to know.” She lifted Elsie’s chin so their gazes met. “Your papa loves you deeply. Make amends with him. He sees how wrong he was about Albert and the war. His pride kept him from admitting it, but he knows.”
Sorrow filled up Elsie’s chest and spilled out. “Mutti, I was wrong too. I lied because I thought I was protecting you. There was so much I should have told you … so much.”
“The past is a black, heavy thing. It will quietly smother our spirits if we let it. You must make peace with it and move forward. Promise me?”
Elsie nodded.
“The second …” Mutti breathed deeply. Her rib bones bowed in Elsie’s embrace. “You must know that your sister, Hazel, is dead, as is her son Friedhelm.”
“For certain?”
“Inside, we’ve both known for many years, ja?” She gave a sad smile of comfort. “I’ve kept in touch with Ovidia. In her search for her missing son, she came upon the Lebensborn birth and death register for the Steinhöring women.” Mutti inhaled sharply, pressed her fingers to an unseen lower pain, then continued. “Hazel’s twin boy. He was listed as disabled and part of something called Operation T4.” She blinked hard. “A Nazi euthanasia program. Common practice, apparently.”
A chilly draft swept through the room. Elsie rubbed her feet against Mutti’s.
“The document also listed the deaths of Program mothers.”
The lamplight thinned. A wave of rain pelted the roof. Below, men’s voices carried through the floorboards.
“How?” asked Elsie.
“Suicide,” Mutti whispered.
“Oh, Hazel.” Elsie squeezed her eyes tight.
“I never told your papa. We each carry our own coffer of secrets. Some are best buried with us in the grave. They do no good for the living.” She gripped Elsie’s hand. “There is an unmarked headstone in our family plot at St. Sebastian’s Cemetery. Will you see that Hazel’s name is rightfully engraved on it?”