Looking Through Windows
By
Caren J. Werlinger
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Looking Through Windows
Lesbian Fiction
Copyright 2008; 2009 by Caren J. Werlinger
All rights reserved.
eBook ISBN: 978-1-934889-90-9
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Reprinted by permission of the publishers and the Trustees of Amherst College from THE POEMS OF EMILY DICKINSON, Thomas H. Johnson, ed., Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Copyright ©1951,1955,1979,1983 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College.
The translation of Renée Vivien’s poem “Paroles à L’Amie” by Caren J. Werlinger.
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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Acknowledgments
There are many people to thank for their assistance in getting this book to this point. The first and biggest thank-you goes to my partner, Beth Skinner, who has patiently read and re-read multiple versions of this book for the past seven or eight years, offering her insight and gentle prompts to make changes in places. My thanks also to the many others who read the earlier versions, and offered their feedback: Bethany, Kim, Annette, Tommie, Roxie, Jackie and Debbie.
My great thanks and admiration go also to Cristie Cyane, a French poet who compiled the complete poems of Renée Vivien in her website, reneevivien.com, a task which must have been a labor of love, given the volume of work Vivien left us. For anyone wanting to delve more deeply into the writings of Renée Vivien, this is an invaluable resource since her work is so difficult to find.
To Dr. Kathleen McNerney, Professor in the Foreign Language Department at West VirginiaUniversity, I send my thanks, not only for her teaching, but for her encouragement to always think independently and act on my convictions. She influenced me and this book more than she realizes.
I also want to thank Beth Mitchum for her “polishing” of the manuscript. She made the editing process painless and easy. And to Cris and Jennifer DiMarco – by accepting this manuscript, they didn’t just validate the work, they validated a piece of me. I will never forget how much that meant.
Looking Through Windows
Chapter 1
Emily's battered red Honda Civic rolled to a stop in the shade of an oak tree so large its branches formed an arch across the quiet street. She climbed stiffly out of the car and looked at the enormous white farmhouse belonging to the oak. She double-checked the address scribbled on a crumpled, sweat-dampened sheet of paper she had pulled out of her jeans pocket. 212 Clearbrook Road. This was the right place. She walked up the neatly trimmed walk to the steps of the deep front porch, a few early acorns crunching underfoot. There she saw an older woman on her hands and knees scrubbing the porch floor with a scrub brush and bucket. She hadn't seen the woman at first in the dark shade of the porch.
"Mrs. Gundlach?" she inquired. "I'm Emily Warner."
"Ach!" exclaimed Mrs. Gundlach as she got spryly to her feet. She was short, maybe five-foot-three, with salt and pepper hair and dark eyes. "We have been waiting for you!" Emily noticed that Mrs. Gundlach's German accent turned 'have' into 'haf.' "Come in, my dear. You must be very hot after your trip. We almost never have weather this warm in Vermont."
When Emily followed Mrs. Gundlach into the house, she felt an immediate drop in temperature, although there were no air conditioners that she could see or hear. Mrs. Gundlach seemed to read her thoughts. "The shade of our trees keeps the house cool, ja?"
"Ja," Emily replied, automatically answering in German. To the right of the foyer was a wide staircase with dark oak treads and handrail. She followed Mrs. Gundlach straight down a short hall to the kitchen, catching glimpses of a large living room and dining room off to the left. There were two steps leading down into the kitchen, where a large pine farm table occupied one end near a brick wall, which contained a fireplace and raised hearth. As Mrs. Gundlach poured them glasses of cold lemonade, Emily looked out the large plate glass window behind the table. Across a wide expanse of recently mowed grass was an old white clapboard barn.
"This is a wonderful house," Emily said admiringly as she accepted a glass from Mrs. Gundlach.
"Ja, Papa and I love this house," Mrs. Gundlach said proudly. "We raised ten children in this house."
"Ten! We only had three children in my family." Emily smiled at the thought of tiny Mrs. Gundlach keeping ten kids in line. They were sitting at the table drinking their lemonade when Emily saw a tall man coming across the yard, accompanied by a huge German shepherd. When he entered the screened-in porch and came into the kitchen, she guessed him to be Mr. Gundlach. He appeared to be in his sixties. He had a deeply tanned face and laughing blue eyes. She liked him immediately and stood to introduce herself. "Hello, Mr. Gundlach, I'm Emily Warner."
"Miss Emily! We have been looking forward to having you here with us. We were very happy to help out when Dr. Brooks called to see if we had a room to let to one of his prize students." His large hand dwarfed hers in a warm handshake. The German shepherd whined and pushed her nose into Emily's hand. "This is Greta, our fierce watchdog," he smiled as Emily scratched her large ears.
"Let me show you to your room," Mrs. Gundlach said, leading the way upstairs. "This is our room, Papa and me," she said, indicating a large room at the east end of the hallway. They passed a couple of furnished but unoccupied rooms before entering a room at the other end of the hallway. To Emily's delight, it was on the south side of the house, facing the road. She'd have plenty of winter sunlight and lots of summer shade.
"This is wonderful," she murmured. "I'll start unpacking the car."
"I'll get Papa to help," Mrs. Gundlach said.
Emily went out to open her hatchback. As she reached in to gather a box of books, Mr. Gundlach joined her and took three boxes of books in his arms, despite Emily's protests that they were too heavy. She quickly filled her arms and hurried to catch up to him. In no time the car was unpacked, and she was alone in her room to settle in.
The room was furnished with a sturdy double bed made of walnut, an oak desk and two tall bookshelves. There w
as a tall chest of drawers on one outside wall, and a good-sized closet for such an old house. She pulled the switch to activate the ceiling fan, and set about putting things away. After she had unpacked her suitcases and put her books on the shelves, she realized how tired she was. She stretched out on the bed, lulled by the low hum of the ceiling fan and promptly fell asleep.
Emily was wandering down a dimly lit hall with darkened windows on either side. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn't see past the reflections into the rooms beyond. Window after window was completely dark and it seemed like the hall went on forever. Finally, in one of the windows, a dim green light shone. By its faint illumination, she saw a still figure lying in a bed. She had to get to the person lying there, but there were no doors, only windows in the hall. She began pounding on the glass, trying to get the attention of the person in the bed... pounding and pounding.
Emily suddenly wakened to the sound of knocking on her door. She didn't know where she was for a moment.
"Emily?" Mrs. Gundlach's voice came through the door and she remembered.
"Yes, Mrs. Gundlach, I'm coming." She quickly got up. "I'm sorry," she said as she opened the door. "I really fell asleep."
"I'm sorry I woke you, but I wanted to tell you that dinner is ready, if you would like to join Papa and me."
Emily realized she was famished. She hadn't bothered to stop for lunch on her trip earlier. "I'll be right down," she said. She quickly brushed her short brown hair, but the soft curls bounced wherever they wanted. She made a face at herself in the mirror and ran downstairs.
Mrs. Gundlach said they would eat in the kitchen since there were only the three of them. They sat down to a meal of oven-fried chicken, German potato salad, green beans picked fresh from their garden and fresh rolls. No one said much as they began eating, but as Emily helped herself to seconds, Mr. Gundlach asked, "What will you be teaching at the university?"
"I'll be teaching German and French while I work on my doctorate in European literature," Emily replied. "I chose this doctoral program at Weston because it doesn't force me to focus on only one language or one culture." 'And because I don't know a soul up here,' she thought as she swallowed. "Dr. Brooks is in a bind. One of his professors retired last year and they haven't been able to replace her, so he has to teach one or two classes more than he is supposed to as department chair. As a result, he asked me to supervise the other teaching assistants, who are all working on their Master's degrees."
Pushing her plate back, Emily hoped she hadn't been impolite by eating so much.
"So, you like my cooking, ja?" Mrs. Gundlach beamed, and Emily realized she had nothing to worry about.
"Oh ja, es was sehr gut!" Again, she replied without realizing she had lapsed into German. The Gundlachs smiled at one another but said nothing.
After the dishes were washed and put away, they all went out to the screened porch with large glasses of iced tea.
"None of our children chose this university," Mrs. Gundlach said. "They all wanted to see other parts of the country. Our youngest, John, is a junior at FloridaState. The others are scattered all over."
Emily fell into a trance listening to Mrs. Gundlach talk about their other children and their five grandchildren. She rocked and listened, responding occasionally.
"Mama," Mr. Gundlach said at last, "It's time for us to let Miss Emily go to bed. She's had a long day."
"Oh ja, Papa. You are right. We get up early, Emily, but you sleep as late as you like. Good night."
"Good night," Emily said sleepily. Once upstairs, she sat in the dark of her room, not wanting to go lie down. This was the hardest part of every day, with long, empty hours stretching out before her. Some nights her brain gave her a merciful respite; other nights were so filled with bad dreams that she felt she hadn't slept at all.
At length, she fell asleep. Under the whir of the ceiling fan, she got a good night of undisturbed slumber.
Chapter 2
The next morning she woke early to the smell of coffee, eggs and bacon. She hurriedly showered, ran her fingers through her damp curly hair and hopped down the stairs dressed in khaki shorts, a sleeveless top and sandals.
"Guten Morgen!" she said enthusiastically to Mrs. Gundlach as she bounced into the kitchen.
"Good morning, my dear!" Mrs. Gundlach replied from the stove. She was wearing a lightweight shirt and cotton work pants. "Karl will be in soon. He is feeding our few chickens and gathering eggs."
"How much land do you have?" Emily hadn't realized it was actually a working farm.
"Only fifty acres now. Just enough to graze a few cattle, keep some chickens and hogs, and have a big garden," Mrs. Gundlach answered as she turned the bacon. "We have two draft horses Papa won't part with. He came from a farming family in Germany, and you just can't keep him from it. He worked for a sawmill until he retired a few years ago, but we've always had a few animals. He said it taught the children to be responsible if they had to take care of something that depended on them."
Pouring coffee for herself and Mrs. Gundlach, Emily smiled. She enjoyed listening to Mrs. Gundlach's soft accent. She had noticed that Mr. Gundach's was a little stronger.
"How old were the two of you when you came to the United States?" she asked, handing Mrs. Gundlach her coffee.
"I was only four when my parents moved us all to America. We left Austria in 1939. Papa's father sent the boys and their mother to Switzerland in 1940. They had a farm and probably could have kept farming, but Papa's father had decided to help hide the Jews who were trying to get out of Germany, and he didn't want the family to be involved. They stayed in Switzerland until the war was over. There was no word from Karl's father. The family couldn't find him, and their farmhouse and barns had been burned. So they came to America. Papa doesn't speak of it often."
"How horrible, never to have known what happened," said Emily, her face hard, her jaw tight.
"It's a beautiful morning!" Mr. Gundlach burst into the kitchen with a basket of eggs. "The kind of day that makes you glad to be alive!" Emily's face softened as she looked at his broad smile. Greta trotted to Emily for a pat before lying under the table.
After breakfast, she helped with the dishes and asked Mrs. Gundlach for directions to campus. Carrying her backpack loaded with a few pads, pens and dictionaries, she decided to walk, exploring as she went. She realized the Gundlachs' house was on the edge of town. Twenty minutes at a brisk pace brought her to the campus. The campus was beautiful, with old stone buildings, ivy trying valiantly to sneak past the groundskeepers' eyes and cover the cool stone.
She found the foreign language building, Whitmore Hall, where she introduced herself to the department secretary, Monica.
"Dr. Brooks is out of town for a few days, but he was expecting you and asked me to give you these personnel folders on the teaching assistants you will be supervising," Monica explained. She showed Emily to the third floor office shared by all the language teaching assistants. It was a large airy room with about ten desks, all furnished with computers and neat stacks of the required texts for each class. There were tall windows thrown open to the warm summer air.
Emily spent the remainder of the morning writing lesson plans for the classes she would be teaching. From time to time, her eyes wandered to the large windows with their view of the mountains beyond. Everything was still green now in late August. She had to force herself to concentrate on her lesson plans.
By early afternoon, her eyes were tired and she was hungry. Wandering through the maze of campus buildings, she found her way to the small downtown area of Weston. She picked a friendly-looking café, where the college-aged server bemoaned the emptiness of the town during the summer. Trying not to stare at the metal stud piercing the young woman's tongue, Emily suspected the town's permanent residents probably enjoyed the quiet, as the university's student population almost equaled that of the town.
After lunch, she strolled along the main street, which was lined with large shade trees. T
here were small shops selling books, clothing, jewelry and a wonderful old hardware store that reminded her of the one she used to go to with her father when she was a child. Everyone was friendly, and no one seemed to be in much of a hurry.
She discovered a small park one block removed from the main street. There were a few benches under trees, and a white painted gazebo with a water fountain. Off to one side of the park was a small stone church with an historical plaque stating that the church was the oldest one still standing in Weston, having been built in 1838. She went into the hushed interior of the small edifice. Her eyes took a moment to adjust to the dim light filtering in through the tall, narrow windows. Almost hidden in the back corner was a steep staircase. It led up to a small belfry, which no longer held a bell, but gave her a wonderful view of the park and the surrounding area. She wasn't sure how long she was up there, but looking at her watch, Emily was surprised to find that it was already three o'clock. She debated going back to the office. She had made a good start on the semester's lesson plans. It was only Tuesday, and classes wouldn't start until Monday, so she had plenty of time. Deciding that a pre-dinner run sounded better than more work, she headed back to the Gundlach house to change.
Caren J. Werlinger - Looking Through Windows Page 1