Ursula Hegi The Burgdorf Cycle Boxed Set: Floating in My Mother's Palm, Stones from the River, The Vision of Emma Blau. Children and Fire

by Hegi, Ursula

  “Oh no,” Lelia said and turned to Father Creed, reminding herself that he was a priest. Not available for Elizabeth even if she were alive. And he did look like a priest. Attentive. And tall. And abstinent. You could tell about abstinence by a man’s lips. Actually he was more like a priest than Father Albin—though, once more, she felt disloyal to even think this—whose pink skin grew pinker each year as if his thickening body were laboring to turn itself inside out.

  Not that Father Creed was handsome. Still, his face—quite homely with its long ears and soft chin—became expressive when he talked. And he was skilled at conversing: questions to Stefan about the architecture of the town; observations to her about the church; compliments to Helene about her cooking; even compliments about her view.

  “How fortunate you are to live by the lake, Mrs. Blau.”

  “Thank you.” With one foot, Helene pressed the button beneath the table to call a maid. “The lake seems different every day. That’s what I love most about it, how it can turn from brown to green to blue within minutes. I can always look down at the water and know what the sky will be like.”

  “Is that your rowboat?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh, but it was my daughter,” Lelia corrected her, “who gave this boat to her husband when she was pregnant with Greta and—”

  “Grandma—” Greta touched her wrist, lightly. “We think of the boat as belonging to the whole family.”

  “That’s right.” Tobias’ voice was curt. “It belongs to this family. Not yours,” he said though he hadn’t touched the boat in three years, not since his father had made him row with him.

  “Rudeness,” Mrs. Flynn said, “does not become you, Tobias.”

  Robert ate faster. Coated his uneasiness with gravy. Swallowed it all.

  Tobias felt his stepmother’s gaze on him. Grateful. “I don’t believe Tobias intended to be rude,” she was saying.

  I didn’t do it for you. Still, he’d rather think of her as family than his father’s first wife, the rich wife whose old mother came here as often as she pleased because it was her money that had started it all. Family. Tobias didn’t even like the word. And he didn’t like those family dinners on Sundays when his stepmother got out her German china and lace, and they all had to sit here in their church clothes, pretending to enjoy roasts and dumplings that were slippery with gravy.

  “But he sounded rude,” Lelia Flynn said.

  When the priest glanced from her to Helene and saw their eyes fused in a moment of open strife, he offered them a different direction. “I used to row as a boy,” he exclaimed as if that revelation were sure to fascinate them both. And, indeed, they both followed him, asking where and when, listening as he described a pond near his parents’ house in Vermont.

  Tobias rolled his eyes at Greta, and they both stood up and carried stacks of plates toward the kitchen.

  “May I help you with those?” the priest asked.

  “We have maids for that kind of work.” Lelia Flynn laid her thin fingers on his black sleeve, keeping him there at the table. “Greta will be honored to take you out on the lake.”

  From the window, Tobias watched as Greta rowed the lanky priest far into the lake. There was something about the way she leaned forward with the oars—her red hair almost touching the priest’s chest before she would lean back and, along with her twin reflection on the surface of the lake, pull the oars through the water again until her arms would circle forward, once more, hair following on their path toward the priest—that made Tobias support himself with one palm on the windowsill because his skin had become heavy and warm, his underwear tight, making him languid and restless all at once. Robert was calling his name, but he couldn’t bear to leave the window that was filled with the back-and-forth circling of Greta’s red hair, and it was only when the boat had grown small and distant that he finally loosened his hand from the windowsill, leaving behind the damp print of his palm.

  His skin felt heaviest across his belly and groin. Maybe if he walked that heaviness would dissolve. But even when he ran down six flights instead of waiting for the elevator, the motion of Greta’s hair swaying toward the priest stayed with him, making him feel oddly unsteady as he walked down to the edge of the dock, and then back to the house and around it to the garage, where he found Danny Wilson sorting through the shelves above the workbench that stored spare lightbulbs and copper pipes, coiled wires and bicycle tires, boxes of nails and bolts all sorted by size.

  Danny glanced up when he heard the steps. “Hey … What are you doing here, Tobias?”

  Tobias walked up to him and—without letting himself think or reconsider—placed his right palm against Danny’s chest and closed his eyes. Leaned his face against the back of his hand. Felt Greta’s hair swinging against the priest’s black-clad chest. Swinging red. And smelled his own familiar scent and something else—tobacco … sweat… the black grease you find on tools—Danny’s scent. Smelled it along with his own. Felt Danny’s heart against his palm.

  And heard Danny say, “Hey now, Tobias. Tobias?” Dark hair sprang in a cowlick from his forehead, curled up and back in a bulge.

  Tobias did not move. Only felt that heavy warm skin, felt it expand as he breathed Danny into his own scent.

  But then Danny’s fingers—bony, resolute—settled on Tobias’ shoulders, guiding him. Away from Danny. Away? Moving cool air into the space between them where, before, there had only been their smell. And Tobias felt the way you do when waking from half-sleep, when you feel half-blind and half-warm and burrow yourself back in, finding without seeing yet knowing by scent the place where you were all-warm before. The exact place. Only now there was Danny’s warmth, gone, and Tobias wanted back to that.

  “What’s this all about?” One rough-skinned thumb flicked against his cheek. “An eyelash. You lost an eyelash, Mr. Tobias Blau. Open your eyes.”

  He did. His eyelash lay on Danny’s thumb, black and curved and insignificant. No longer mine.

  “Blow it away and make a wish, Mr. Tobias Blau.”

  He did. Made a wish. Then took hold of Danny’s thumb. Pulled Danny’s hand to his heart. And felt a fluttering in his chest to the right of his heart.

  Danny blinked. Glanced past Tobias.

  “No,” he said.

  Tobias felt cold where Danny’s hand no longer was.

  “If your father—”

  “You said to make a wish.”

  “If you still want your wish when you’re older, I’ll be here.”

  “How much older?”

  “When you’re as old as I am.”

  “Ten years from now?”

  “It’s the time we have between us. That’s why I understand we have to wait.” Danny crossed his arms as if to protect himself from Tobias and leaned against the workbench that was set up like a desk with its many drawers and an opening for legs so that you could sit down to repair a curtain rod, say, or open the vise that was fastened to the left side of the workbench.

  “Swear you’ll be there.”

  “All right.”

  Tobias shook his head.

  “What is it now?”

  “You’ll have a wife by then. Debts. Kids. False teeth.”

  Danny grinned. “I doubt either one of us is headed in that direction, Tobias. Still, if I am, I’ll just have to wait with the family life and what comes with it. Because this is something I don’t want to miss. Now hop hop. I got work to do.”

  Dazed, Tobias sauntered from the garage, and as he came around the house, Greta and the young priest were standing in the boat that tilted as they switched positions, their reflections elongated as if stretching toward unknown and dangerous depths, and in that instant, Tobias felt Greta linked to himself as never before, knew what she felt and wanted, though his own wanting was secret while hers was public, there for any fool with eyes or binoculars to witness.

  Finally, Greta was settled in the boat, and the priest lowered himself, took hold of the oars, and rowed them
back toward shore. Stripes of sun shivered across the surface of the lake, and where the water became shallow, it took on the color of the sand beneath. The priest tied down the boat and climbed on the dock, extending one hand to help Greta. His touch felt like church to her, only sweeter; and when he slipped, she was the one to help him up and felt it again. And knew he felt it too as he left a smear of blood on her hand.

  “Let me.” She bent across the deep scrape that split the fleshy ball of his thumb. Instinctively, she pressed her fingers against it.

  Though the bleeding stopped almost immediately, she kept her fingers there and led him to sit on one of the boulders next to the beach. The following Sunday at mass, when he raised his hand to place the communion wafer on her tongue, the scrape had healed without leaving a scab.

  During his three months in Winnipesaukee—until a permanent replacement for Father Albin arrived—Noah Creed often talked with Greta after mass and continued those conversations during afternoon walks or in the rowboat. Being with him, Greta found, was almost as good as being alone, sometimes even better because he didn’t disturb her aloneness, just placed his own aloneness next to hers.

  Too much space around herself. That’s what she had where before he used to be when he returned to his diocese in Boston. And though he wrote to her, his letters only emphasized that he no longer lived near her. It confused her that being alone was not as complete as it had been before; and she felt restless in that empty space around her, a space that grew wider yet that November when her grandmother died.

  Stefan was in his restaurant when he found out that Lelia had named the bank as trustee for Greta. Heat burst into his hands, and he excused himself, walked through the kitchen and out of the side door. Haven’t I always provided for Greta? Looked out for Greta? How could Lelia have betrayed him like this? As Greta’s father, he was the logical person to be trusted with her inheritance. Three million. Wind rose from the lake, cooled his burning hands. Three million. In comparison, the old loan was paltry. Insignificant.

  So insignificant that it wouldn’t even show in the papers that Greta received from her grandmother’s lawyer several weeks later. Some time during all those years, Stefan figured, Lelia must have lost the document. With Greta that well provided for, he saw no reason to mention the loan. The bank might request immediate payment on Greta’s behalf with the result that her brothers, in comparison, would have even less. Knowing Greta, Stefan felt certain she would agree with him. And eventually she would benefit, really, because he would use those funds to make the Wasserburg more magnificent. For her and her brothers.

  In the meantime, though, he was left with his own copy of the loan document. If he ripped it up and dropped it down the incinerator chute, it might end up with Homer Wilson. Flushing it down the toilet could result in plumbing problems. Late one night, when he got ready to burn it in his restaurant, he heard the Hungarian’s voice—nothing good can come from fire—but still he set his match to the paper, though his fingers were shaking—nothing good nothing good nothing good from fire—and as he felt his rage rise with the flames, he felt justified because of Lelia’s betrayal. But the Hungarian was not about to be silent. When did you really begin to treat the Flynns’ money as your own?

  In January, Greta moved into a small apartment on the first floor. It troubled Stefan that she was choosing to live away from him, but Helene pointed out to him that many young women of Greta’s age went to universities, farther away from their families than a different floor in the same building. Still, Greta was his only child who’d often made him feel like a worthy father, and by leaving, she was shaking that image he would have liked to have of himself. He never knew what to say to his sons. With Tobias—either sullen or quick to cut him with clever words—even small incidents, like reprimanding him for passing notes in class, caused injured silences. And the other boy was so cautious. Spoiled soft by his mother. Almost ten but young for his age. Except when he played the piano.

  The first reported healing happened by chance.

  Miss Perkins, the teacher who used to live next door to the Blaus and whose hands had been deformed with arthritis for nearly ten years now, dropped her umbrella outside Heflins’, and Greta—on her way to mail a letter to Father Creed—bent to pick it up. Though Greta only touched the teacher’s hands for an instant, Miss Perkins felt a warmth throughout her fingers and palms, a warmth that stayed with her and made it possible to uncurl her fingers that evening. By morning the stiffness had seeped from her hands as though Greta had released something within her, and within a week her fingers were restored to the agility they’d had when she was in her forties and used to plant flowers at the first hint of spring in her garden by the lake, shoulders warmed by the sun while her knees burrowed into the earth, dislodging the last skin of winter.

  After tales of her recovery spun through town, people recalled other incidents they’d mistaken for coincidences—Mr. Small’s headache disappearing moments after Greta Blau had brushed against his arm in the library; that pain in Betty Simms’ knee easing up when Greta Blau had helped her up the church steps; a wart vanishing from the right thumb of Mrs. Teichman after she’d sewn a winter coat for Greta Blau. While Stefan was skeptical, Helene believed in Greta’s uncommon talent for healing. Every time she looked at Robert, she knew that—without Greta—her son would have bled from her that long-ago morning.

  The people of Winnipesaukee took to coming to the Wasserburg at all hours to wait outside Greta’s apartment, and Stefan would find them leaning against the carved railing that led up from his lobby or sitting on the mahogany chairs. When he protested to everyone in the family, except Greta, that his lobby looked like a doctor’s waiting room, Helene suggested he simply talk to Greta. But he found it impossible to question his daughter on anything. Because of the loan. Even though I did what’s right. For everyone.

  Though Greta did not encourage the townspeople, she didn’t turn them away when they appeared at the Wasserburg. That gift of touching—she had known since childhood that it passed through her to others, but she’d used it rarely and without thinking about it much. And until now she’d never been asked to reach for someone in pain.

  Sight-seers, Mr. Wilson called the people because, while they waited to meet with Greta, they stared at the light-filled lobby with its rich paneling, the marble tiles and the peacock carpets that were still lush and colorful. Most had only seen the house from the outside, and they’d come to love it—or rather an image of it that was shaped by their own dreams of opulence and by what others had told them about the house. They were more absorbed with what happened in the Wasserburg than in their neighborhoods, and when they entered the vestibule and stepped through the French doors, they gazed up at the crescents of multicolored glass that signified their passage into a place unlike any they’d known before.

  While Miss Garland complained, “Most of them couldn’t afford an apartment here,” Mr. Wilson soon became accustomed to chatting with them, snatching minutes of gossip while acting busy in case his wife were to see him and remind him of his unfinished chores.

  And so they continued to come and sit outside Greta’s door, the people of Winnipesaukee, tearing through her reluctance with the power of their belief in her abilities. Yet, when she called them into her living room, they felt disappointed because it was so plain: wooden floors without a carpet, books stacked against the walls, a table with neither lace nor linen, narrow chairs without pillows. Puzzled why she didn’t make her apartment as splendid as the rest of her father’s house, they speculated what they would do if they inherited three million dollars. Certainly not stay in one place like Greta who hadn’t even gone away to college, who’d chosen the only apartment in the building that was as small as Miss Garland’s. It mystified them why she would spend most of her hours by herself, the banker’s red-haired granddaughter, the one they had to convince to tap into her gift, a gift she would have sheltered in the silence of her rooms if the town hadn’t pressed her into disp
ersing it as though extracting dues.

  This gift had nothing to do with the house and, yet, made up for the house in an odd way as if she were reinstating something her father had taken from the town, though no one could have said precisely what it was, because the Wasserburg had become the finest accomplishment the town could pride itself on. It had stood here on the shore of the great lake that the Indians had named Smile of the Great Spirit, had stood here long enough for many people to find it difficult to remember what their town had been like before it was built, while for the children it had always been part of their lives.

  With tumors and arthritis the townspeople came to Greta.

  With headaches and broken bones.

  Some brought their bad dreams.

  Their secret fears.

  And she’d feel the suffering that belonged to their bodies, now and again even their deaths, though she never told them. That knowledge came to her in pictures—some bright and sudden, most gradually as if strained through a screen of dust. They wanted her to touch them, and she didn’t mind doing that, touch them, lightly, on the shoulder, say, or on the knee or forehead, and after they’d leave, they’d report to others a tingling that expanded to heat their entire bodies and made them capable of doing what they hadn’t done before. Like the Heflins’ little daughter, Betty, ill with polio since she was one year old, who’d never walked till Greta ran her fingers along the thin, pale legs; and even though Betty would never walk quite right, she’d manage to propel herself forward from one foot to the other, refining that movement into an oddly elegant limp by the time she’d go away to teacher’s college.

  When Greta was alone, she often drew in her sketchbooks, drew in fast and fluid lines the way she had as a child when premonitions had appeared in the pictures she’d drawn on the butcher paper Sara had given her, showing her things she didn’t know yet. Sometimes she felt depleted by the hopes of the people who came to her.

  “What I want for myself,” she wrote to the young priest, “is to learn how to touch without fusing, without bleeding away.”