“Sewing,” I finally remembered. “Very good sewing, mother make. Makes.”
“Maybe Ted?” Claire suggested.
“You can try,” her mother snorted, going back into the house.
Ted was Edward Marmaduke. He was going to be Vanessa’s husband. I had seen him in the garden, too, a pale Englishman with very blond hair who turned an unhealthy pinky-red under the summer sun. He would serve in Africa and Italy but come home in one piece in 1945, his face scorched to a deep brick that never really faded.
That summer of ’39 he didn’t want a poor immigrant couple to encumber the start of his married life with Vanessa: I heard that argument, crouched on the other side of the wall between Minna’s yard and Claire’s, knowing it was about me and my family but only understanding his loud “no” and from Vanessa’s tone that she was trying to please both Claire and her fiancé.
Claire told me not to give up hope. “But, little monkey, you need to learn English. You have to go to school in a few weeks.”
“In Vienna,” I said. “I go home. I go on the school there.”
Claire shook her head. “There may be war in Europe; you might not go home for a long time. No, we need to get you speaking English.”
So my life changed overnight. Of course, I still lived with Minna, still ran her errands, endured her bitterness, but my heroine actually did take me to the pergola. Every afternoon she made me speak English with her. When school started, she took me to the local grammar school, introduced me to the headmistress, and helped me at odd intervals to learn my lessons.
I repaid her with lavish adoration. She was the most beautiful girl in London. She became my standard of English manners: Claire says one doesn’t do that, I would say coldly to Minna. Claire says one always does this. I imitated her accent and her ways of doing things, from how she draped herself in the garden swing to how she wore her hats.
When I learned Claire was going to read medicine if she got a place at the Royal Free, that became my ambition, too.
XV Gate Crasher
Morrell’s and my brief vacation in Michigan helped drive Friday’s worries to the back of my mind-thanks chiefly to Morrell’s good sense. Since I was driving the outbound route I started to detour to Hyde Park, thinking I could make a quick trip in and out of Fepple’s office to look for the Sommers family file. Morrell vetoed this sharply, reminding me that we’d agreed to forty-eight hours without business.
“I didn’t bring my laptop, so that I wouldn’t be tempted to e-mail Humane Medicine. You can stay away from an insurance agent who sounds like a disgusting specimen for that long, too, V I.” Morrell took my picklocks out of my bag and stuck them in his jeans. “Anyway, I don’t want to be a party to your extracurricular information-gathering techniques.”
I had to laugh, despite a momentary annoyance. After all, why would I want to spoil my last few days with Morrell by bothering with a worm like Fepple? I decided not even to bother with the morning papers, which I’d stuck in my bag without reading: I didn’t need to raise my blood pressure by seeing Bull Durham’s attacks on me in print.
Less easy to put aside were my worries about Lotty, but our ban on business didn’t include concerns about friends. I tried to describe her anguish to Morrell. He listened to me as I drove but couldn’t offer much help in deciphering what lay behind her tormented speech.
“She lost her family in the war, didn’t she?”
“Except for her younger brother Hugo, who went to England with her. He lives in Montreal -he runs a small chain of upscale women’s boutiques in Montreal and Toronto. Her uncle Stefan, I guess he was one of her grandfather’s brothers, he came to Chicago in the 1920’s. And spent most of the war as a guest of the federal government in Fort Leavenworth. Forgery,” I added in response to Morrell’s startled question. “A master engraver who fell in love with Andrew Jackson’s face but overlooked a few details. So he wasn’t part of her childhood.”
“She was nine or ten when she last saw her mother, then. No wonder those wartime memories are too painful for her. Didn’t you say he was dead-the person named Radbuka?”
“Or she. Lotty revealed no details at all. But she did say it, said that the person no longer exists.” I thought about it. “It’s a peculiar construction: that person no longer exists. It could mean several things-the person died, the person changed identities, or maybe the person betrayed her in some way so that someone she loved or who she thought loved her never really existed.”
“Then the pain could come from the reminder of a second loss. Don’t go sleuthing after her, Vic. Let her bring the story to you when she’s strong enough to.”
I fixed my eyes on the road. “And if she never tells me?”
He leaned over to wipe a tear from my cheek. “It’s not your failure as a friend. These are her demons, not your failures.”
I didn’t speak much for the rest of the ride. We were going about a hundred miles around the big U of Lake Michigan’s southern end; I let the rhythm of car and road fill my mind.
Morrell had booked a room at a rambling stone inn overlooking Lake Michigan. After checking in we took a walk along the beach. It was hard to believe that this was the same lake that Chicago bordered-the long stretches of dunes, empty of everything but birds and prairie grasses, were a different world than the relentless noise and grime of the city.
Three weeks after Labor Day we had the lakefront to ourselves. Feeling the wind from the lake in my hair, making the crystalline sand along the shore sing by rubbing it with my bare heel, gave me a cocoon of peace. I felt the tension lines smooth out of my cheeks and forehead.
“Morrell-it will be very hard for me to live without you these next few months. I know this trip is exciting and that you’re eager to go. I don’t grudge it to you. But it will be hard-especially right now-not to have you here.”
He pulled me to him. “It will be hard for me to be away from you, too, pepaiola. You keep me stirred up, sneezing, with your vigorous remarks.”
I’d told Morrell once that my father used to call my mother and me that-one of the few Italian words he’d picked up from my mother. Pepper mill. My two pepaiole, he’d say, pretending to sneeze when we were haranguing him over something. You’re making my nose red, okay, okay, we’ll do it your way just to protect my nose. When I was a little girl he could make me burst out laughing with his fake sneezes.
“Pepaiola, huh-sneeze at this!” I tossed a little sand at Morrell and sprinted away from him down the beach. He chased after me, which he normally wouldn’t do-he doesn’t like to run, and anyway, I’m faster. I slowed so he could catch me. We spent the rest of the day avoiding all difficult topics, including his imminent departure. The air was chilly, but the lake was still warm: we swam naked in the dark, then huddled in a blanket on the beach, making love with Andromeda overhead and Orion the hunter, my talisman, rising in the east, his belt so close it seemed we might pluck it from the sky. Sunday at noon we changed reluctantly into our dress clothes and drove back into the city for the Cellini’s final Chicago concert.
When we stopped for gas near the entrance to the tollway, the weekend felt officially over, so I bought the Sunday papers. Durham ’s protest led both the news and the op-ed sections in the Herald-Star. I was glad to see that my interview with Blacksin and Murray had made Durham cool his jets about me.
Mr. Durham has dropped one of his complaints, that Chicago private investigator V I Warshawski confronted a bereaved woman in the middle of her husband’s funeral. “My sources in the community were understandably devastated by the terrible inhumanity of an insurance company failing to keep its promise to pay to bury a loved one; in their agitation they may have misspoken Ms. Warshawski’s role in the case.”
“May have misspoken? Can’t he come right out and say he was wrong?” I snarled at Morrell.
Murray had added a few sentences saying that my investigation was raising troubling questions about the role of both the Midway Insurance Agency and the Ajax Ins
urance company. Midway owner Howard Fepple had not returned phone calls. An Ajax spokesperson said the company had uncovered a fraudulent death claim submitted ten years ago; they were trying to see how that could have occurred.
The op-ed page had an article by the president of the Illinois Insurance Institute. I read it aloud to Morrell.
Imagine that you go into Berlin, the capital of Germany, and find a large museum dedicated to the horrors of three centuries of African slavery in the United States. Then imagine that Frankfurt, Munich, Cologne, Bonn all have smaller versions of American slavery museums. That’s what it’s like for America to put up Holocaust museums while completely ignoring atrocities committed here against Africans and Native Americans.
Now suppose Germany passed a law saying that any American company which benefited from slavery couldn’t do business in Europe. That’s what Illinois wants to do with German companies. The past is a tangled country. No one’s hands are clean, but if we have to stop every ten minutes to wash them before we can sell cars, or chemicals, or even insurance, commerce will grind to a halt.
“And so on. Lotty isn’t alone in wanting the past to stay good and buried. Pretty slick, in a superficial kind of way.”
Morrell grimaced. “Yes. It makes him sound like a warmhearted liberal, worrying about African-Americans and Indians, when all he really wants to do is keep anyone from inspecting life-insurance records to see how many policies were sold which Illinois insurers don’t want to pay out.”
“Of course, the Sommers family also bought a policy they can’t collect on. Although I don’t think it was the company that defrauded them, but the agent. I wish I could see Fepple’s file.”
“Not today, Ms. Warshawski. I’m not giving back your picklocks until I board that 777 on Tuesday.”
I laughed and subsided into the sports section. The Cubs had gone so far into free fall that they’d have to send the space shuttle to haul them back to the National League. The Sox, on the other hand, were looking pretty, the best record in the majors going into the final week of the season. Even though the pundits were saying they’d be eliminated in the first round of the play-offs, it was still an amazing event in Chicago sports.
We reached Orchestra Hall seconds before the ushers closed the doors. Michael Loewenthal had left tickets for Morrell and me. We joined Agnes and Calia Loewenthal in a box, Calia looking angelic in white smocking with gold roses embroidered on it. Her doll and dog, festooned with ribbons in matching gold, were propped up in the chair next to hers.
“Where’re Lotty and Max?” I whispered as the musicians took the stage.
“Max is getting ready for the party. Lotty came over to help him, then got into a huge row with both him and Carl. She doesn’t look well; I don’t know if she’ll even stay for the party.”
“Shh, Mommy, Aunt Vicory, you can’t talk when Daddy is playing in public.” Calia looked at us sternly.
She had been warned against this sin many times in her short life. Agnes and I obediently subsided, but my worries about Lotty rushed back to the front of my mind. Also, if she was having a major fight with Max, I wasn’t looking forward to the evening.
As the musicians took the stage they looked remote in their formal wear, like strangers, not friends. For a moment I wished we’d skipped the concert, but once the music began, with the controlled lyricism that marked Carl’s style, the knots inside me began to unwind. In a Schubert trio, the richness of Michael Loewenthal’s playing, and the intimacy he seemed to feel-with his cello, with his fellow musicians-made me ache with longing. Morrell took my fingers and squeezed them gently: separation will not part us.
During intermission, I asked Agnes if she knew why Lotty and Max were fighting.
She shook her head. “Michael says they’ve been arguing off and on all summer over this conference on Jews where Max spoke on Wednesday. Now they seem to be fighting about a man Max met there, or heard speak, or something, but I was trying to get Calia to hold still while I braided the ribbons into her hair and didn’t really pay attention.”
After the concert Agnes asked if we would drive Calia up to Evanston with us. “She’s been so good, sitting like a princess for three hours. The sooner she can run around and let off steam the better. I’d like to stay until Michael’s ready to leave.”
Calia’s angelic mood vanished as soon as we walked out of Orchestra Hall. She ran shrieking down the street, shedding ribbons and even Ninshubur, the blue stuffed dog. Before she actually careened into the street, I caught up with her and scooped her up.
“I am not a baby, I do not get carried,” she yelled at me.
“Of course not. No baby would be such a pain.” I was panting with the exertion of carrying her down the stairs to the garage. Morrell was laughing at both of us, which made Calia at once assume an icy dignity.
“I am most annoyed at this behavior,” she said, echoing her mother, her little arms crossed in front of her.
“Speaking for both of us,” I murmured, setting her back on her feet.
Morrell handed her into the car and gravely offered Ninshubur back to her. Calia wouldn’t allow me to fasten her seat belt but decided Morrell was her ally against me and stopped squirming when he leaned in to do the job. On the ride to Max’s, she scolded me through the medium of lecturing her doll: “You are a very naughty girl, picking up Ninshubur and carrying him down the stairs when he was running. Ninshubur is not a baby. He needs to run and let off steam.” She certainly took my mind off any other worries. Perhaps that would be a good reason to have a child: you wouldn’t have energy left to fret about anything else.
A handful of cars were in Max’s drive when we got there, including Lotty’s dark-green Infiniti, its battered fenders an eloquent testimony to her imperious approach to the streets. She hadn’t learned to drive until she arrived in Chicago at the age of thirty, when she apparently took lessons from a NASCAR crash dummy. She must have patched up her disagreement with Max if she was staying for the party.
A black-suited young man opened the door for us. Calia ran down the hall, shrieking for her grandfather. When we moved more slowly after her, we saw two other men in waiters’ costumes folding napkins in the dining room. Max had set up a series of small tables there and in the adjacent parlor so that people could eat dinner sitting down.
Lotty, her back to the door, was counting forks into bundles and slapping them onto a sideboard. Judging from her rigid posture she was still angry. We slipped by without saying anything.
“Not the best mood for a party,” I muttered.
“We can pay our respects to Carl and leave early,” Morrell agreed.
We tracked Max down in the kitchen, where he was conferring with his housekeeper on how to manage the party. Calia ran to tug at his arm. He hoisted her up to the countertop but didn’t let her stop his discussion with Mrs. Squires. Max has been an administrator for years-he knows you never finish anything if you keep accepting interruptions.
“What’s going on with Lotty?” I asked when he and Mrs. Squires were done.
“Oh, she’s having a temper tantrum. I wouldn’t pay much attention to it,” he said lightly.
“This isn’t about the Radbuka business, is it?” I asked, frowning.
“Opa, Opa,” Calia shouted, “I was quiet the whole time, but Aunt Vicory and Mommy talked and then Aunt Vicory was very bad, she hurted my tummy when she carried me down the stairs.”
“Terrible, puppchen,” Max murmured, stroking her hair, adding to me, “Lotty and I have agreed to keep our disagreements to one side for the evening. So I am not going to violate the concordat by giving my views.”
One of the waiters brought a young woman in jeans into the kitchen. Max introduced her as Lindsey, a local student who was going to entertain the small ones at the party. When I told Calia I’d go upstairs to help her put on play clothes, she told me scornfully it was a formal party, so she had to keep her party dress on, but she consented to go with Lindsey to the garden.
> Lotty swept into the kitchen, acknowledging Morrell and me with a regal nod, and said she was going up to change. Despite her daunting manner, it was a relief to see her imperious rather than anguished. She reappeared in a crimson silk jacket and long skirt about the time the other guests began to arrive.
Don Strzepek walked over from Morrell’s, actually wearing an ironed shirt-Max had readily agreed to include Morrell’s old friend in the invitation. The musicians showed up in a bunch. Three or four had children around Calia’s age; the cheerful Lindsey scooped them all together and took them upstairs to watch videos and eat pizza.
Carl had changed from his tails into a soft sweater and trousers. His eyes were bright with pleasure in himself, his music, his friends; the tempo of the party began to accelerate with the force of his personality. Even Lotty was relaxing, laughing in one corner with the Cellini bass player.
I found myself discussing Chicago architecture with Michael Loewenthal’s first cello instructor. Over wine and little squares of goat-cheese polenta, the Cellini’s manager suggested today’s anti-American sentiment in France resembled anti-Roman feelings in ancient Gaul. Near the piano Morrell was deep in the kind of political controversy he delights in. We forgot our idea of leaving early.
Around nine, when the rest of the guests had gone into the back of the house for dinner, the doorbell rang. I had lingered in the sunroom, listening to Rosa Ponselle sing “L’amero, sarò costante.” It had been one of my mother’s favorite arias and I wanted to hear the recording to the end. The bell rang again as I crossed the empty hall to join the rest of the party-the waiters were apparently too busy serving dinner to respond to it. I turned back to the heavy double doors.
When I saw the figure on the doorstep, I sucked in my breath. His curly hair was thinning at the temples, but despite the grey, and the lines around his mouth, his face had a kind of childlike quality. The pictures I’d been looking at showed him contorted with anguish, but even with his cheeks creased in a shy, eager smile, Paul Radbuka was unmistakable.
Total Recall Page 14