by Dean Hughes
Bea looked up, but she didn’t hear the words. What she was thinking was that she was the one who had dealt with all the problems at the plant for a long time now.
“I’m going home,” she told Grace. “Check with Al about that. He’ll know what to do.”
“He hasn’t been involved with—”
But Bea got up and walked to the coat rack. She got her spring coat and draped it over her arm as she walked out. She needed a new coat. She had told Al that, and he had told her to get one. But she hadn’t had time to shop. She hadn’t baked enough for a long time either, and the girls complained about that—although they didn’t bake anything themselves. She was secretary of the ward Primary, too, and needed to start thinking about the yearly penny drive. She didn’t mind doing it, but it was “one more thing” in her life. She wondered what the bishop would say if she told him she had been in the Primary a long, long time, and she wouldn’t mind a change. But the bishop never knew what to do with her. After all, she was the stake president’s wife, and he didn’t want to give her a calling that might put too much stress on her family.
The stake president’s wife. Sister Thomas. That’s who she was. Everything about her was defined in that title. She never played that role, never tried to figure out what she should do to fit it. But she didn’t have to. Everyone knew who she was whether they knew her or not.
Bea wished she had the keys to the Hudson—her husband’s car, really—and she could just take off and go somewhere by herself for a few days. But of course, she couldn’t do that. A stake president’s wife would never do such a thing.
She took the bus and headed home, and that was surely something she would end up regretting—because the work would keep piling up. She liked the rebellion in her act, but she knew her mood wouldn’t last long. It wasn’t in her to do something really dramatic. She would go home and have a couple of hours to herself, and then she would go about life the way she always had. What she hated most was that her husband would come home and apologize but never really understand what he had done. And she would accept the apology, only so there would be peace, and then life could go on.
What she felt more than anything was deeply, deeply tired. She got up every morning thinking of her children who were so far away. There had been no letters from Alex lately, and she had no idea what that meant. Wally had become like a great blank spot in her consciousness. There was so much to worry about and so little to know about him. The ache was so old that it seemed it ought to soften, but it never did. And now there was Bobbi, off on the other side of the world, close to the battle. There was no guarantee that a hospital ship would always be safe. Every time someone knocked on the door, she walked toward it with a subtle trepidation in her chest, fearful that another telegram might have come. But Bea had never liked being around self-centered, self-pitying people. She wasn’t going to melt into any sort of self-indulgence herself now. She had already been a little too petulant, walking out on Grace the way she had. And the irony was already becoming obvious: she didn’t know what she would do when she got home. She certainly wasn’t going to bake anything, and she wasn’t the type to sit around in a bubble bath. What she would do, once she calmed down a little more, was try to think where the rest of that paperwork could be filed—and give Grace a call.
The problem was, life was like a giant river—too forceful, too channeled to affect very much. She could throw her little tantrum, or whatever it was she had done, but all she could make was a ripple on the surface. Nothing would change. Al was Al, and life was life, and that was that.
She looked out the window. She was riding up Twenty-First South by then, and every store, every stop sign, every crack in the sidewalk, it seemed, was as familiar as her own worn face that reflected in the window. But when she tried to tell herself how unhappy she was, she knew that she was trying a little too hard. There was a certain comfort in the sameness, and she knew it.
She got off the bus at Eleventh East, right in the heart of Sugar House, and as she did, she heard a little voice: “Hi, Sister Thomas.”
She looked around to see a girl from her ward, the Nichols’ daughter, Kathleen, who had to be about ten now. Bea had known her since the day she was born. “Hi, Kathy,” Bea said. “How are you, honey?”
“Fine. How are you?”
“I’m fine.” Bea touched Kathy’s hair, and then, suddenly, she was fighting not to cry. She walked away, but the affection, the warmth, in little Kathy’s voice was lingering in her head. “Sister Thomas” was a nice title. At least it could be.
What Bea found at home was what she half expected, and feared. The Hudson had arrived ahead of her. And Al was on the porch, waiting for her. She would be all right soon, had even started to feel that way. But she didn’t want to hear this.
“I’m sorry,” he said. Of course.
“Al, I know. But I don’t want to talk about it yet. Don’t worry. I’ll be back at the plant in the morning. In fact, I’ll go in and call Grace right now.”
“Bea, what I told you wasn’t true.”
“What?”
“I thought I was telling the truth when I said it, but I wasn’t being honest with myself.” For the first time she realized that he hadn’t taken that strong stance of his, his feet set a little too far apart. He looked small, diminished. His head was down.
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m not used to thinking that way—that I ought to consult you about things. I just went ahead without giving much thought to whether you needed to know or not.”
“I know.”
“And then . . . well, this is hard to say.”
Bea waited. He had his hands in his pockets, the wings of his double-breasted coat open and flopping to the sides.
“Bea, it’s not easy for me, the way you’ve handled the plant. I walk in there and people treat me like I’m a visitor. I’ve had the foremen say to me, ‘You might be right about that. I’ll ask Bea what she thinks.’ Things like that. I’m not so sure I didn’t negotiate this Bendix deal just to show you up a little—let you see I’m still the provider around here, the guy who gets things done.”
Bea nodded. She saw how honestly chagrined he was, and deflated. President Thomas had just taken a mighty step down—off a high pedestal. She couldn’t imagine how much it had cost him to say these words, and even more, to discover them in himself.
“So what do we do about that?” she asked.
“We don’t do anything. I just have to think about things a little differently.”
“Al, what if I want to stay involved—after the war is over?”
“That’s fine. It’s up to you. Except, we both need to step away some and find more time for each other.”
“Time for each other? Are you serious?”
“I love you, Bea. I miss you. We’ve let too many things get between us.”
Bea reached inside his coat, took hold of his suspenders, and pulled him closer. Then she wrapped her arms around his thick body, inside his coat. It had been a long time since she had felt this close to him, had liked him this much. “Do you still want to go dancing tonight?” she asked.
“Sure I do,” he said. He held her for a time, and then he began to hum, “I’ll get by as long as I have you.”
President Thomas kept Sister Thomas close, but he took hold of her hand, held it out. The two began to dance. On their front porch.
Chapter 18
Peter Stoltz was placing chunks of seed potato in the ground—working his way along a little furrow that he had dug, always being careful that the potato eye was facing up. He had never gardened before and didn’t know much about it, but he was learning. Frau Schaller taught him what she knew, and much he figured out for himself. He didn’t dare to say much to neighbors. If he talked to them, it might be hard to keep his deception alive, that he was a refugee from Poland.
Peter had never known such a spring. The willow trees along the stream at the back of Frau Schaller’s property had b
lossomed, brilliant in yellow-green. He wasn’t sure he had ever noticed that before, or all the birds. He didn’t like some things—the mud, the lack of confidence in his own knowledge—but the world itself pleased him more than ever before. He would notice the warmth of the afternoon sun on his back and accept that little pleasure as though it were a new discovery. He had died during the winter, and now he was alive, feeling stronger and healthier all the time. It was all a gift, and he had not owned it long enough to be ungrateful. In the night he would awaken from horrifying, wild dreams, all chaos and noise, and he would breathe frantically for a time, just trying to convince himself that he wasn’t in a foxhole but in a bed. And then for a time he would look about—on some nights watch the flow of angling moonlight through the dormer window in the attic—and remind himself that he was safe and well. He would nestle under those warm blankets and tell himself that he had escaped hell, that he would never be ungrateful for that. And he would pray.
Prayer had come as a wonderful discovery. He had prayed as a boy, and then for so long, during his time in the German army, he had lived with hopelessness. When he had finally prayed again, it had been nothing but pleading and desperation, but now it was a chance to feel a closeness to a presence he had once given up on. What he felt was that he was loved, even though, for a time, he had come to believe that could never happen again.
Peter also knew that he was loved in this house. Frau Schaller wasn’t really old enough to be his mother, but she treated him as though she were. And Katrina, who was fifteen, had fallen in love with him. He knew that and thought it was a little funny. She was such a skinny, awkward kid, and her attachment to him was so obvious it embarrassed both of them. But she was funny, and always happy—and great entertainment. She had not seen war in the way that he had, but she had suffered plenty. Frau Schaller had lost her husband, Katrina her father—which was sacrifice enough—but the Schallers had also struggled to scrounge enough food to stay alive. Katrina’s little brothers dressed like paupers, and they had almost nothing. No toys. They played soccer with a ball of rolled-up rags. In a way, Peter felt sorry for them, but they seemed not to know they were missing anything. The Schallers laughed so often, so fervently, that it was hard not to feel that everything was all right in their home.
As a boy, Peter had gone into the country to find vegetables, to bring them back to his mother and sister. But he had been wary of it all. He hadn’t liked the smell of manure, the mud, the uneducated men his father haggled with. And the families had seemed doltish. But the things he had cared about as a boy seemed frivolous now. He and his dad had sat and played chess by the hour, and Peter loved to remember those times, but he had no desire for mind games at present. He liked the feeling that his body was coming back to life, that he could experience emotion, that he could concentrate on a needed task and carry it out. In the depths of the winter and the war he had become a mindless sort of organism with a pumping heart and little else. Now, he was a person again. He longed to find his family someday, but for the present, it was enough to laugh, to work, even to smell manure, which now seemed rich and pungent to him, not at all foul.
“Do you want me to cover them over now?”
Peter looked up. It was Katrina. She was standing the way she always did: a little too straight, her arms at her sides, looking like a fence post. Her shadow stretched out behind her, a thin line. “That’s all right. I’ll do it.”
“Why? Do you think I can’t push dirt into a little trench?”
“If you get potatoes too deep, they won’t grow. You have to do it just right.”
Katrina laughed, and Peter looked up again. “I’ve been planting potatoes all my life. Two weeks ago you were asking my mother where you could get ‘potato seeds’ to plant.”
Peter knew that was true, and he was embarrassed. “Cover them if you want to,” he said. “And cover your mouth at the same time.”
“I changed my mind. You can do it yourself.”
He thought she really was offended for a moment, but he took one more look at her, and she was smiling. Her front teeth weren’t straight, and her lips were thin—like the rest of her—but she did have an artless sort of smile. Her mother cut her hair for her and kept it short. Peter always thought she looked like a boy, but still, someone he might have liked being friends with—had he been a little younger.
“I have things I’d rather think about anyway—things better than potatoes.”
“Like what?”
“I can’t tell you. It’s far too philosophical for you to understand. You farmers only understand dirt.” She had turned around and was talking toward the empty field. She had stretched her arms wide, like wings, and she seemed interested in the shape she could make with her shadow. She began to sway a little, back and forth.
“Dirt and girls. That’s what I understand,” Peter said.
“Oh, thank you very much. And what do you know about girls?” She let her arms rise and fall, like slowly flapping wings, and still, she watched her shadow.
“That they think about as much as dirt does.”
“That shows what you know. I can fly.”
“That’s girl thinking—all imagination.”
“What’s wrong with imagination?”
“It’s not real.”
“It is too. It’s as real as anything. Maybe more. I can fly anywhere—see anything I want to see.”
Peter straightened. He had a sling over his shoulder, full of the potato pieces. He walked back toward her, and then he picked up the hoe he had left behind, and he began to push the dirt into the furrow. He was actually being a little more careful than usual to show her that he was watching to get the depth just right.
“Here’s your problem,” he said. “You’ve never been anywhere. How can you imagine places you’ve never seen?”
“Now I’ve trapped you. You’ve made a blunder—a logical blunder. And it shows you’re not a philosopher, like me.”
“What blunder?”
“If I had seen places, I would only have to remember them,” she explained. “But if I’ve never seen them, I can imagine them any way I wish. That’s much better.”
“But if you’ve seen nothing at all, you have no concept to start with. Have you ever seen a big city?”
“Yes.” She sounded wistful, as though she were drifting to some distant place.
The kid was strong as wire, but there was something so delicate about her that he hardly had the heart to tease her. Still, he asked, “Which ones?”
“Berlin and Paris and Amsterdam and—”
“You have not.”
“Oh, Peter, you are such an innocent boy. You don’t know half the things I’ve done and seen. You imagine that you do, but you don’t.”
Peter chuckled to himself, but he didn’t look at her this time. She was just a little too delighted with herself. She had a little girl’s voice, sparrow-like, but her laugh was forceful, more like a crow than a sparrow.
“You’ve seen pictures on calendars,” Peter said. “You haven’t traveled and seen places the way I have. I’m a man of experience.”
“You’re only eighteen. That’s still a boy.”
“I feel older,” he said, and he meant it.
“So where have you been? What cities have you seen?” She had forgotten about her shadow now. She was looking past him, toward the setting sun.
“Frankfurt, Berlin, Stuttgart—lots of places.”
“All in Germany?”
“No. I’ve been to Switzerland, Poland, Russia, East Prussia, Lithuania, and Latvia.”
“What were they like, all those places?”
But Peter wished that he hadn’t bragged. He had never talked much about himself. Part of that was a fear of being traced somehow, but most of it was the fear of his memories. He didn’t want to tell the Schallers anything about the war. “They’re just like the pictures on calendars, I guess,” he said. “You’re the philosopher. You can tell me. Are the pictures just as good?”
But the question sounded more serious than he meant it, and she accepted it that way. “No, Peter. I want to go to all those places. I want to go everywhere. What’s Berlin like?”
“It isn’t very far away, Katrina. You’ll go there sometime.”
“I know. But what is it like?”
“Katrina, it’s destroyed. You know that. It’s all standing walls and rubble. It’s nothing you would want to see.”
“Did you see it before the bombs?”
“Yes.”
“Tell me about it back then.”
“It was a basement. It was a hiding place. It was one day in a park. It was a jail to me.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Nothing. It was a pretty city, Katrina, with a big park—the Tiergarten—and beautiful buildings. I don’t know what else to tell you.”
“Did you have to hide there?”
Peter had reached the end of the row again. He walked back now to make a new furrow. He watched Katrina as he approached her. She seemed concerned, and he didn’t want that. He liked her better when she was joking. “I don’t want to talk about those things,” he said.
“You never talk about the war.”
“I never will.”
“Because it’s so horrible?”
He stood before her and considered all the answers he could give. But nothing exactly sufficed. He could see how frayed her dress was, how worn her shoes, how frail her arms and neck. She was a symbol for this war—and she didn’t know it. So finally he said, “Yes,” and let it go at that.
“Did you know that Katrina is a Russian name?”
“I don’t know. I guess I never thought about it.”
“It is. I was named after a Princess. Someday I’m going to go to Russia and see all the—”
“Don’t even think of that, Katrina. You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Why?”
“The Russians will be here soon enough, and then you’ll know.”
“Will they hurt us?”
But now Peter knew he had said far too much. Yes, they would hurt her. And it was a great worry. But not one that Katrina needed to think about yet. “I won’t let them hurt you,” he said.