Colors of Christmas

by Newport, Olivia

  Despite the regime, religion classes at school continued. Twice a week for one hour, Catholic and Protestant instruction was held. Astrid had no religion and had never been baptized. Her parents never talked about God. But in the hall, where her feet sometimes got cold as she occupied the lone chair and watched the religion teachers close the doors behind them, shutting her out, she had no doubt. Even without religious training at home, she believed in God. Surely He was within reach. Maybe God was just on the other side of one of those doors. In her school clothes and warmest socks and sweater, she inched her chair toward one of the doors. Her heart throbbed on the day she mustered courage to ask the Catholic priest if she could sit in his class.

  He agreed. That’s where it began.

  Someday, she hoped, she could be a Catholic, but her interest in religion was one more thing that she knew better than to ask her parents about.

  Papa kept his Apotheke business open and constantly sought to improve it. Sundays brought the delight of his attention. School continued. Mama went out every morning with two cloth bags to fill with vegetables at the market. Nanny Paula cared for little Uta. Lina, the other familiar domestic help of Astrid’s childhood, helped Mama with the housework and cooking. Papa planned the family outings. Mama played the concert grand piano and made sure Astrid and Harald got piano lessons. Harald learned to play properly, while Astrid played by ear because she couldn’t seem to learn to read music fluently.

  Life went on.

  It was life on the outside, bottling up what was on the inside. The unanswered questions about what happened to the children with yellow stars or the fathers who never came home. The impossibility of saying, “No, I don’t want to be in the Hitler Youth.” The secret of taking religious instruction when Astrid knew her parents were no longer religious. The silence of the radio that ought to have cheered their home. How long they would have to sleep on mattresses on the living room floor. And, eventually, what would happen to them all after the city burned?

  And the survival bags were always there, a constant reminder that the air raids might one day strike their neighborhood. The position of her sweat suit was the last thing Astrid double-checked before she kissed Mama good night and stretched out on her mattress.

  “Astrid.”

  She blinked and returned her gaze to the table and met Betty’s eyes.

  “Are you all right?” Russell asked.

  How long had she been daydreaming—if that’s what you call remembering events from a lifetime ago? Surely she had held up the game. She shifted her eyes to the inquiring chaplain.

  “Have I completely frightened you with the suggestion of a Bible study?” Russell said. “My apologies.”

  “No, of course not,” Astrid said. “Thursday afternoons in the community room.”

  “That’s right. And if you want to talk …”

  “Thank you, but I’m quite fine,” Astrid said. Ever since she arrived at Sycamore Hills, her thoughts filled with events she hadn’t entertained for decades. She was stiff with the effort of it. Perhaps the people who said we carry our memories in our bodies and not just our minds were right.

  Russell pointed to a tiny office across the landing. “If you ever need me, I share space with Penny, right there.”

  Penny. The director of fun. The one determined to have a Christmas in gold. Astrid’s penchant for reverie had begun there. She still hadn’t come across the missing gold ornaments.

  CHAPTER 10

  Carly zigzagged through neighborhoods, glancing in all three mirrors in a regular rhythm. Periodically she pulled into a driveway, turned around, and cut across a corner she had passed earlier.

  One thing was clear. She was not made for this cloak-and-dagger stuff. All she wanted was to give her son a safe, loving home. How could she have misjudged Truman’s character so drastically? Or had his character changed? Was it the onset of mental illness with no one in his life to tell him what they observed? He always said he didn’t have family nearby, and except for Carly, he had held his coworkers at a distance. Carly blew out a breath. That should have been her first clue. He didn’t say more than hello to anyone else at work, but he had managed to pull Carly’s life story out of her as soon as she put a picture of Tyler on her desk.

  By the time she altered her course to head toward home, she was four times as far from the house than she should have been. The yogurt was getting warm, and the ice cream sandwiches she had bought for a treat would be mush. She’d have to get rid of the box before Tyler ever saw it.

  And she would be late for her afternoon patients. At least stopping off at home to put away a few groceries was in the same direction as Sycamore Hills.

  Her mother thought she should tell somebody at Sycamore Hills about Truman and the restraining order. Carly had one photo of the two of them together, a selfie Truman took on the night she met him for a movie. It seemed harmless at the time, just two friends seeing a film. If only he’d left things alone. Her mother’s argument was that it wouldn’t hurt for a photo to be available at the reception desk of Sycamore Hills. It wouldn’t be on display, just stuck in a discreet place where only the receptionist on duty would see it. She’d have to cut his face out. She’d never let anyone see what he’d done with the photo. It was bad enough showing it to the police to prove there was reason for a restraining order.

  Carly didn’t want the fuss, the explanations that would be expected, the murmurings among the administrative staff if she left a photograph at the front desk of Sycamore Hills. It would be better if she simply made sure Truman never found out where she worked. As far as she knew, he still had a job, so he couldn’t be stalking her every minute of the day.

  At home, she went through the back door into the empty house. Her hand hesitated over the lock. She was only going to be there a few minutes. In the past, neither she nor her mother worried about locking the back door when they were home.

  Carly turned the deadbolt and shoved groceries into their proper places before she picked up her keys again. Four minutes was the length of her stay in the house. Outside, she scanned in a manner that had become her new normal.

  The Sycamore Hills employee parking area was full, and she had to park farther out and rush into the building.

  “There you are.”

  Carly cringed at the voice. She had hoped Patricia would be occupied in another part of the building, not at her own desk at the far end of the therapy and exercise room.

  “I’m sorry.” Carly stuffed her handbag in a drawer and shirked off her winter jacket.

  Patricia waited. Carly swallowed. What could she say?

  “You missed an entire appointment,” Patricia said, “and now you’re ten minutes late for your second appointment. Mrs. Donahoe is waiting for you in her room.”

  “I’ll go immediately.” Carly pulled Mrs. Donahoe’s file from the rack and snagged Mr. Thompson’s as well. “I’ll find Mr. Thompson and see if he’s available at the end of the day to make up the session.”

  “You might have called,” Patricia said. “I understand that things come up. It happens to all of us. But it’s simple courtesy to call.”

  Things come up. Carly fished a pen out of a cup of writing utensils. Somehow she doubted any of the other therapists had a restraining order against a former coworker.

  “I’m sorry.” What else could she say? “I’m going to try to persuade Mrs. Donahoe to start coming down here for her therapy. She could make faster progress if we used some of the resistance equipment.”

  Patricia shrugged. “She’s pretty good at resisting suggestions.”

  “I really want to help her.”

  “I know. Good luck. And next time, call.”

  Next time? Carly didn’t want a next time. She needed this job, and she liked it more than she had expected to. But talking to anyone at Sycamore Hills was out of the question. They couldn’t know how complicated her life had become.

  CHAPTER 11

  Astrid rolled herself into the physica
l therapy room the next morning, having steeled herself for the challenges Carly would inflict on her. Picking up marbles with her toes, if she could master it, was a skill she wouldn’t use frequently, but it might amuse the grandchildren when they were all together for Christmas. So far, she’d gotten no further than concentrating on making her toes curl and paying attention to all the parts of her foot that were involved in that simple task.

  Carly looked up and wagged a few fingers before wiping down a machine someone had just used. It was a bulky machine, and Astrid hoped that Carly didn’t have it in mind for her. Curling her toes and having her foot massaged seemed far preferable. Astrid transferred herself to the nearest chair to await instructions and watched the movements of the young woman. On one hand, they seemed ordinary—running a rag across equipment, opening a folder, picking up a pen and then dropping it, bending to retrieve it, pushing a couple of keys on a computer keyboard, and finally turning to meet Astrid’s eyes. On the other hand, the movements were stilted, clumsy, and plagued with trembling.

  What on earth could be wrong?

  Astrid certainly would do her best to cooperate well and perhaps ease the girl’s troubles in some small way.

  Carly approached. “How are you today?”

  “Ready to work,” Astrid said, making a point to smile.

  “I think I’ve put together a plan that will bring good results—as long as you practice the exercises between our sessions.”

  “Of course,” Astrid said. “I will learn to pick up marbles and then shoot them with just my toes. Wait and see.”

  Carly cracked a smile and extended a hand to help Astrid up. “Come on over to the therapy table. We’ll start with some heat to loosen up the muscles in your foot.”

  Astrid arranged herself on her rolling scooter and followed Carly across the room, where Carly lowered the table. A few minutes later, Astrid’s injured foot was wrapped in warmth. She rather liked the sensation.

  Carly pulled a backless stool over. “I don’t think your file contains a clear description of how you injured yourself.”

  “Being foolish,” Astrid said. “I should have left a hand free to use the stair rail, but my hands were full of clothes I cleared out of my closet, and I didn’t want to make two trips down the stairs. I couldn’t see my feet.”

  “How many steps did you fall?”

  “Just three.” If she had fallen from the top of the stairs, it would have been twelve and she would have broken more than two small bones. “But I suppose the step I missed is the one that counts.”

  Carly’s dark head bent to make notes. “Someone left a note here that you speak German.”

  “I thought my accent would have given me away,” Astrid said.

  Carly shrugged only one shoulder. “I wouldn’t say you have a heavy accent.”

  “When I was your age,” Astrid said, “I was very self-conscious about speaking English, but I tried hard every day to disguise my accent.”

  “Why did you feel you needed to disguise it?”

  “You are young. But when I came to this country, people were wary of Germans. It was in the years after the war.”

  “Oh. I hadn’t thought about that.”

  Carly began to unwrap Astrid’s foot and moved into a massage. Astrid closed her eyes. Nothing about Sycamore Hills was anything like Germany, yet she seemed to think about the old days more than she had in years.

  “We lost our home,” she said, eyes still closed. “Our city was not a primary target until close to the end. I heard once that the bombs they dropped on us were left over from an air raid of Nuremberg. Incendiary bombs. Everything burned. We went into the countryside with next to nothing.”

  Carly’s fingers pressed into Astrid’s heel. “Are you Jewish?”

  Astrid opened her eyes. “No. I don’t compare my suffering to what the Jews endured. No one I knew truly supported the Nazis. Life was more precarious than I realized as a child. My parents did everything they could to protect us, but when your city is destroyed in the space of twenty minutes, everything changes.”

  “I can’t imagine.” Carly’s fingers moved to Astrid’s arch.

  “We stayed in the empty restaurant space of a brewery. We had a woodstove to cook on, but no wood. No pots and pans, no food to cook. No furniture but the mattresses and chairs my father saved from the wreckage the night of the bombing. A cellar went deep into the mountain, and that is where we hid when we heard the planes coming.”

  “You must have been very frightened.”

  “I suppose I was. I was only eleven, but that was old enough to see for the first time that even the best parents cannot prevent everything.” Astrid could smell the damp earthen floor of that place where they huddled beside old beer barrels. “If it hadn’t been wartime, the village would have been quaint. Most of the streets were not paved, and the farmhouses made of mud and twigs needed repairs. We couldn’t afford to keep a maid or a nanny anymore. My parents went house to house bartering for what we needed. Finally we had a used pot and a few dishes. We ate farina and cooked apples that my brother and I found in an orchard. No one had any food to sell, even to someone who had a little money.”

  Mama had walked miles to barter the saccharin sweetener Papa had saved from the Apotheke for the farina and to beg for milk. The farmers barely had enough to feed their own families, so it was a treat when Astrid’s family had milk with their cereal. Astrid had looked after Uta while Mama was gone, never knowing if she would return with food.

  “But if there were farms, weren’t they growing food?” Carly asked.

  “Most of the men were conscripted into the German military,” Astrid said. “The women only planted what they could manage on their own so they could feed their own children, but suddenly the countryside was flooded with refugees from the bombed-out cities.”

  “It’s like a movie.” Carly indicated Astrid could sit up.

  “A horrible, horrible movie. Believe me, you wouldn’t want to live through it.”

  Papa had borrowed a bicycle to pedal back to the rubble that was Würzburg and see if his business property was salvageable. Astrid had insisted on going along. Her unrelenting begging wore Papa down and he found another bicycle and warned her she would have to keep up and she must not leave him. The outside walls and massive foundation were intact, but the four-story building had crumbled down in on itself. Coals still smoldered, throwing heat upward through the rubble. Papa could do nothing. Somewhere in the debris was his safe, and in the safe were the papers proving the property belonged to him. If he could find that, he could plan how to rebuild. But the search would have to wait until the fires burned out. His shoulders slumped so steeply that she did not dare voice the other question on her childish mind. Would they ever get the gold ornaments back?

  “I want to measure your mobility,” Carly said, “to see if you’re progressing. Bend your ankle as far to the left as you can.”

  Astrid complied, and Carly made a note in a chart in the file folder.

  “You had a maid and a nanny,” Carly said. “You had a nice home, and your father had a business. It must have been hard to lose all that so suddenly.”

  “I held on to God in those days,” Astrid said. “I had taken some religious classes—only the ones the Nazis permitted—and the village had a priest. One day, I took my little sister to see him and tell him I wanted to become Catholic. Mama gave her permission, and we went for lessons and were baptized. A few months later I had my First Communion along with children who were much younger. I didn’t care. I knew I wanted to hold on to God. I didn’t know what the Nazis would do, or whether the next night a bomb would take us all, or when the war would end. But I knew God wouldn’t change. I’ve been so grateful that God would give me the faith to believe.”

  “Now point your toe and extend your ankle as far as you can,” Carly said, one hand lightly on Astrid’s foot.

  The foot didn’t move easily in any direction. To Astrid it looked withered.

&nb
sp; “Don’t worry,” Carly said. “You’ll get there. It just takes time. The exercises are important to do every day, two or three times.”

  “I will,” Astrid said. “I will get back on my feet this time just like I have every other time—with God’s help.”

  “I admire your faith.” Carly picked up a tool that measured the angle of Astrid’s foot.

  Astrid wanted to say that of course Carly could have faith in God as well. But there would be plenty of time to ease into that encouragement. After all, they would be spending an hour together three times a week for the next six weeks.

  The door opened, and Sam, the cook, entered.

  “Hello, Sam,” Astrid said. “Do you know Carly, physical therapist extraordinaire?”

  Sam and Carly nodded at each other.

  “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you up here before,” Carly said. “Aren’t you out of your element?”

  “Mrs. Costineau is my great-aunt,” Sam said. “I try to pop up when I can, though I usually take the back stairs.”

  “That explains it,” Carly said.

  “When I glanced through the glass and saw the two of you together, I couldn’t resist sticking my head in.”

  Carly looked away as Sam’s gaze settled on her. Astrid watched. Sam was interested. Carly was guarded.

  Therapy sessions would also allow time for Carly’s story to come out.

  “I’m trying to persuade Sam to offer some German dishes,” Astrid said.

  He winked at her. “Will you pass on your mother’s own secret recipes?”

  Astrid laughed. “My mother wasn’t much of a cook when I was a child. I learned from Mrs. Schmidt, the landlady.”

  “Before or after the bombs?” Carly asked.

  “After. When we were in the village. Cooking, baking, cleaning, sewing, laundry. Mrs. Schmidt’s husband was off in the war. Even after the war, he didn’t come home for a very long time. I liked learning to keep house, and she liked help with her two boys.”