All for a Sister

by Allison Pittman

  I married your father, Arthur, because I immediately, deeply loved him. At the time, I didn’t recognize this as a spell he was so adept at casting. He was handsome, and humble, and so passionately intelligent. He had a way, in our courting days, of making me feel like I was the only woman in the world. The only woman who ever had been. Unconcerned with the confines of propriety, he kissed me sooner than he ought, bedded me before our marriage, and once he was properly installed as the man of my house, failed to see me again. Always, he wanted something more; it is what drove him through his world of discovery. Unfortunately, it was what drove him into the beds of countless others.

  Until you came along. You, my Celeste, centered him. Settled him. Perhaps because, from the beginning, it was obvious you were his equal in intelligence and curiosity.

  But I digress.

  I loved that house and I loved your father, despite the eccentricities that would forever set us apart from our Chicago circle. I believe all of our friends saw him as somewhat of a novelty. Always doodling his formulas and leaving the room in sudden fits of genius. But he had the appetites of a man far above his natural status. The best foods, the finest wine, the most beautiful women. Yes, I can tell you this now, as he is gone and your memories of the good, loving father that he was are in no danger. He never made any attempt to hide the fact that he pursued me relentlessly because of my beauty. The portraits of my youth will attest to that. There was a carnality to him that he kept hidden under his intellectual pursuits. So entranced was I with the latter, I feared what might happen should he not have that distraction of the former. While he satisfied his appetite in beds other than our own, there were only two circumstances in which I feared the ramifications of his unfaithfulness.

  The first was in the spring before you were born, when our little family consisted of only myself, your father, Calvin, and our Mary. With the absence of all but the most distant relatives of your father’s in St. Louis, Missouri, we filled our home with friends—sometimes little more than acquaintances—for all celebrations. It was a large house, you remember, built for grand occasions, and in those days there was nothing I liked better than a house full of music and people, dining and drinking with games of charades and pass-the-slipper. Old-fashioned, I know, especially in light of today’s modernity of phonographs and dancing. And perhaps unconvincing, given that you’ve only known my proclivity for solitude.

  There was a woman—vapid thing, divorcée—who had nudged her way into our group by refusing to vacate it even after her husband so publicly and disgracefully abandoned her. Mrs. D—— should suffice, as I can tell you now that nothing ever came of it. Sometimes I wonder if the poor woman even knew the qualities she exuded, always hanging about with such a wanton gullibility. We all worried that our husbands would succumb, falling to some great, unfulfilled masculine need. I more than others, I suppose, for I’d suffered the storm of infidelity. I knew the signs to look for, the slight touch, the gaze that lingers too long, the mad scramble to be near one another that they might be thrown together accidentally during one of our silly games.

  And so it was that night in October. We hadn’t given any sort of party since your brother’s birthday three months before, largely because of my suspicions of your father and Mrs. D——. How silent our house! Calvin content with his puzzles and little Mary quiet as a pillow wherever she might be. Quiet, too, as your father was so often away, sometimes spending entire nights in his lab, perfecting the components that would eventually bring us here to Los Angeles. Or so he said, and I refused to give myself over to doubt. Besides, Mrs. D—— was having a flagrant affair with a star tenor in our Metropolitan Opera, so my fears were kept at bay.

  Thus when my birthday came around, I decided to throw a lavish affair in our very own home. I ordered a cake from a local bakery and, rather than taxing our kitchen staff, arranged to have the food catered by Kruger’s. In lieu of a formal dinner, I opted for a series of heavy hors d’oeuvres so those in attendance could eat and mingle at will, myself included. Two hours before the first guest was due to arrive, I was called to the kitchen. Mrs. Lundgren, one of our regular staff, was too ill to work—a complaint I’d grown used to. In fact, just weeks before, I’d included five extra dollars to finance a visit to a doctor, but we both knew our places well enough to never speak of it.

  In her stead, she’d sent her daughter, Dana. The girl was about twelve years old, I’d say, well old enough to enter service, though her mother seemed bent on another course. She wore her mother’s uniform—black dress with the high collar and lace pinafore. I’ll never forget how the garment hung on her, so thin she was.

  It wasn’t as if the girl had never been to our house before. She’d come often enough when we had heavy cleaning to do and need of an extra set of hands. Even more often in the months previous when her mother had fallen prey to illness. But never on a formal occasion.

  “Mama’s taught me everything,” she assured me, carrying a tray and addressing imaginary guests to my satisfaction, so I put her to work.

  Just as well, because the gaiety in our house that night would have masked untold blunders. Mrs. D—— and her tenor entertained the crowd—he, singing; she, plunking away on the piano; and the both of them carrying on like lovers in a matinee. Your father told one version or another of his favorite jokes, and our house felt so much like a home, I wanted the children to be a part of it. I went upstairs myself to fetch them down, little Calvin looking so sweet and sleepy as he walked behind me, and my sweet Mary with her soft, drowsy face against my shoulder. I paraded them around shamelessly to be petted and coddled, perhaps as my pronouncement to the room that my husband had responsibilities here that far outweighed the rewards of any dalliance.

  Looking back now, I see that I needn’t have worried so much about my husband’s eye roving about our party guests. On the contrary, he seemed completely devoted to our protégé, Dana, assisting her with the heavy silver trays, holding the kitchen door open, and whispering somethings into her ear during the odd moment when she appeared overwhelmed by her duties.

  How easily I suppressed my fears. She was only a child, after all. Young enough to be his own. And the child of a servant, no less. No matter what my husband’s failings might have been in his ability to be faithful to me, he was married to the idea of being part and parcel to some manner of aristocracy.

  So when the hour struck late, and all the guests had left, and a bitter cold rain began to pummel the house . . . And when little Dana stood, so thin in her mother’s dress, without any sort of coat whatsoever . . . And here we were with a house so huge and warm . . .

  “Let her sleep in the nursery,” your father said, bending low to speak. “In the night nurse’s bed. She’ll catch her death out there.”

  I told him he was right, of course. Just another reason why we should have kept a nurse full-time, for these nights when I’d be too exhausted to care properly for the children. Mrs. Gibbons, our only live-in staff, was good enough to make a bottle, which was still kept warm, wrapped in a tea towel, and I fed it to my Mary as I watched the girl rummage through a forgotten cabinet to find some suitable gown to sleep in.

  “She’s awfully sweet,” said the girl—Dana. Dana! I must resign myself to the use of her name. I remember her thin, cold hand hovering near Mary’s head, hesitant to touch.

  I mumbled an agreement as I rocked her, drinking her in as she sucked on her bottle with those heavy, drooping eyes.

  “And very lucky, to have all of this.”

  I took my eyes away from my drowsy child to look at this girl, her bony frame draped in faded, yellowed cotton, surrounded by all the silk and eyelet lace trimmings of the nursery. She, Dana, had been a little one just like Mary, though she’d no doubt suckled at her mother’s breast, as was more fitting the poor. If I remember correctly, she’d been no more than two years old when her mother came to work for the family after her father’s—if we are to believe the stories—absentee death on a river barge. Her
mother had presented herself with the title of Mrs. as would befit a married woman, but one could never tell for sure.

  I told her it wasn’t luck, keeping my voice soft and even so as not to disrupt my daughter’s oncoming slumber. We are born into the life God designed for us to have. He has a purpose, a plan for my little one, just as he has a plan for her.

  “Do you really think so?”

  How can I faithfully describe the way those words were spoken? By their construct, I know they were meant as a question, but there was no hint of inquiry in her pronouncement. No desire for a response. No curiosity. More like a simple resignation with a hint of bitterness. And flat, as though she’d spoken them into an empty tin.

  I told her it wasn’t a matter of my thinking so; that it was in the Bible.

  “Where?” she challenged. “Where does it say in the Bible that God wants some of us to be rich and others not?”

  I had to confess that I didn’t know exactly, but it had to be the case, for such was the world. How could the rich be charged to feed the poor if there were no poor to feed?

  “Still, it doesn’t seem fair, if we’re all his children.” Throughout our talk, she roamed about the room, touching all the pretty things. She’d plucked a small, square pillow from Mary’s crib, a pretty thing made of pink silk, covered with lace and small pearl buttons. “Could you choose? Could you bear to have one of your children grow up here and send the other one off to live down by the slaughterhouses?”

  I’d grown uncomfortable with the conversation and told her so, at which point she looked stricken and apologized profusely.

  “Mama always tells me I think too much. No future in that for a girl.”

  By this time the nipple had fallen completely away from Mary’s sleepy lips. I handed the bottle to Dana at first, thinking she might take it down to the kitchen, but reconsidered, given her dishabille. Instead, I asked her to set it on the tray table at the top of the hall, just a few steps away, to be gathered by the housekeeper in the morning. During those few moments of her absence, I held my sweet Mary to my heart, rubbing her warm back to coax out the last air bubble, then laid her down in her crib and pulled her soft wool blanket up as a guard against the cold night.

  Dana returned and stood beside me, and for a moment we looked down at my daughter together, and some force compelled me to reach my arm around her. I haven’t touched many people in my life, and something about that moment sent rather a shock through me. The thinness of her shoulder blade, so different from my own healthy, soft girl. I made a promise to myself, then, to make right what I could. To better provide for her mother, so her mother could better provide for her. It is a promise I kept, though differently interpreted from what I imagined.

  After wishing her a genuine good night with a kiss to her cool temple, I escorted her to the bed in the small alcove adjacent to the nursery and tucked her in, returning soon with a thick down comforter.

  When I finally retired, my husband was already sleeping soundly, such as he did after a night of too much wine, but I remained awake for the better part of an hour, listening to the steady pounding of rain against the window.

  Perhaps, I thought, I could bring the girl here to live. There’s another room off the kitchen she could share with her mother. Show her kindness and generosity to soften her bitterness.

  And then I drifted off into the sweetest sleep. Better than any I’ve had since. Dreamless and deep.

  Then, that sound I’ll never forget. How it haunts me still. More of a wail than a cry—so unaccustomed in our quiet home. It tugged me from my blissful depth, slowly, hand over fist, my mind heavy with sleep. I turned my head to see my husband’s empty pillow, his place in the bed exposed and cold.

  I spoke his name in case he was waiting in the shadows, but in the absence of a response, I heard the wailing again. Louder this time, and mournful, a duet with my husband’s own voice. Fully awake now, I sat up and trained my ear. It was the nursery. Of course it was, dear Mary with a stomach pain, crying out having woken to a stranger.

  Without a thought to putting on a robe or slippers, I ran toward the nursery, each step stealing any hope that this was a matter so simple as a sour stomach. Those were not the cries of my child, but the girl just down the hall. And my fickle husband out of bed—

  Oh, how the hall stretched before me. Miles of paint and photographs and that runner Calvin was always tripping over. When I finally arrived, the door was open, and there was my husband, wearing only the trousers of his pajamas, his hair disheveled, and a look of sheer panic on his face that stopped my heart. His mouth moved as if to speak, but no words came out.

  Still the wailing continued, and from behind him stepped the girl. She’d lit a lamp, and her borrowed gown, thin as it was, made a cotton halo around her frame. It was torn at the shoulder, open, exposing her breast. Or, at least, it would have exposed it if not for the fact that she clutched some small bundle. It took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the sight, and then I realized what she clutched was my Mary.

  It made no sense, that she would be holding my child. That he would be in the room. I rushed forward, screeching for the girl to give me the baby. By now her wails had taken form—“I didn’t . . . I couldn’t . . . She wasn’t . . .”

  I grabbed for my baby in a manner I never had, like she was a sack of something needed in the kitchen, and indeed in doing so found her to be heavier than I remembered. Heavier than she was in sleep. Heavier than she was in life. My entire body dropped with the weight of her. Straight to my knees I fell, cradling her, holding her close, praying with every breath she’d never have.

  DANA VISITS THE OFFICES OF ROLLING ARTS ENTERTAINMENT

  CULVER CITY, CALIFORNIA

  1925

  HE SAT ON THE OTHER SIDE of the desk. Staring, not speaking, while the clock ticked another five minutes gone. Dana stayed perfectly still in her wooden chair, knowing the slightest movement would send an echoing creak into the musty, solid silence.

  He spoke, not taking the thin cigarette holder from his lips, and it bobbed with each word. “Do you know who I am?”

  “Celeste said you make movies.”

  “That I do.” His voice was deep, his words clipped. German, she would have thought, though she knew nothing about Germans other than the fact that they were the enemy in the war. Later, Celeste would relay that he was, in fact, Austrian. Which meant even less. He seemed too old to have been a soldier. His hair, short and a jumble of colors ranging from near blond, to brown, to gray, sprang stick-straw-straight above a tan, angular face. Werner Ostermann, according to the name on the brass plate on his desk, and on the door, and on the small scrap of paper folded neatly in her pocket.

  “And you want to make a movie about me.”

  “That I do.”

  He gave no verbal elaboration, only bored his gaze deeper. Instinctively she reached for her hair to stroke the long tresses, seeking the comfort she’d always found in their weight, but her fingers found only the soft, curling fringe peeking below her hat. Slowly, she returned her hand to her lap, pleased at having done so without eliciting the tiniest noise from the chair.

  “I suppose I don’t know how that is possible.”

  His lips spread into a thin grin, and he removed the cigarette holder, balancing it across a shallow dish on the corner of the paper-strewn desk. One dropped ash, and the entire small office would be in flames.

  “Nothing more than a thousand pictures shining on a screen. And each picture tells a story.”

  “I don’t have a story.”

  “I disagree.”

  She wanted to argue. After all, she’d been to a movie. Three, in fact, just since her arrival in California. One about a man who meets Jesus and races chariots. Another about a woman who walked a tightrope and rode white horses in the circus, and the last about a hideous monster lurking in the shadows of a castle. That one she couldn’t watch, except from between the thin slit of her fingers as she covered her eyes. Celeste had been
squealing beside her. “Dana! Dana! You’re missing the best part!”

  “I’ve done nothing for anybody to see,” she said, fighting hard to keep her voice above a whisper. “What could you possibly put on film?”

  He held his hands in front of his face, angling them against each other until he’d created an open square through which he looked at her with one eye and said, “Take off your hat.”

  “My hat?” she questioned, but obeyed.

  He stretched his arms out farther. “I can see the entire story in your eyes. With a camera and some music, I could make a movie just right here. But—” he dropped his hands—“only I would understand it, and art must be shared.”

  She turned the hat over and over in her hands. “I’m not art.”

  “That remains to be seen. But Celeste is. Your story. Her face.”

  He slammed his hand on top of the desk as if delivering a verdict. Dana flinched at the gesture, nearly dropping her hat. It really was a beautiful thing—a bell-shaped dome, a flipped rim, and a wide blue ribbon punctuated by a perfect silk flower. She put it back on her head, not bothering to look for the perfect angle the way Celeste had taught her, and sat up straight.

  “Why do you need me, then? You know the story. I hear it was in all the papers.”

  In answer, he picked up a handful of folded newspapers and held them aloft. “These tell me nothing. They have no heart.”

  “Neither do I.” She said it with convincing flatness, or so she thought.

  Ostermann let out a short, bitter laugh. “So dramatic. Perhaps you are the one to be the actress in the film?”

  He was joking with her, of course. Something she was still training her ear to detect.

  “What do you want to know? They say I killed a child. They put me in prison. And then they let me out, and I came here. All that time between—twenty years, Mr. Ostermann; more than half my life—nothing happened. I went nowhere, saw no one, did nothing. Who would come to the theater to see an empty screen?”