Under the Same Blue Sky (15 page)

“She’s going,” my father declared. “There’s nothing more to discuss. As Martin Luther would say: There she stands; she can do no other.”

Tante Elise bristled at the secular use of her hero. “Well then,” Uncle Willy soothed, “we won’t discuss it.”

In the depth of my sickness, closed in my room, I’d been removed from my father’s brooding fixations on the war. He’d just bought cases of nails from a new supplier. “If every nail was a man,” he announced, “they wouldn’t make a week’s casualties at Verdun. They say the battle could last for months.” British conscription had swelled the Allied ranks. “Where will
our
new soldiers come from? Already every healthy man is in uniform. Will we start taking little boys and old men? How much more blood can we lose?” My mother pressed his arm as if to draw away pain. Where was
her
blue house?

“Maybe the best thing
would be
for America to join,” said Tante Elise. “Just to end things quickly.”

“All for an archduke,” Uncle Willy said, echoing my students.

“It’s a beautiful day,” my mother announced. “Let’s take a walk to celebrate Hazel getting better.” We did that. Emboldened by the sparkling air, we walked up to Shadyside to enjoy the views and luxurious distance from war plants. After weeks in my room, every color, every new shape and vista was a gift. The moist earth revealed by melting snow promised springtime. The men walked together, smoking their pipes. Tante Elise, my mother, and I linked arms. These were my people, and this was my city, for all its difficulties. If only I could stay. If only I weren’t like Margit, drawn away by longing for something
different
or
other
or
more
. Yet if I didn’t find myself, then any other place on earth, any great city, flowered paradise, or exotic Eastern land would soon prove false to me and I to that place.

At breakfast, my mother picked at the crust of her rye bread. “It’s a long way to New Jersey. What should I make you for the train?”

I gripped the chapped hand. “
Lebkuchen
with hazelnuts. I’ll help.” We baked, speaking of only cookies, cinnamon buns, and strudel. She brushed flour from my face. I tied her apron when it loosened.

“Hazel,” she said quietly. “In her own way, Margit must have loved you. She just didn’t want to be a mother.”

“And you did.”

“Yes. I did, very much.” We stood close together, shaping cookies. From the store below came the
ping-ping-ping
of my father’s hammer. Her face clouded. “He spends so much time on those tins now.” She put the
lebkuchen
in the oven and sat beside me. “When peace comes,” she said dreamily, “whoever wins, I’ll make cookies for the neighborhood. Then we’ll close the store for a week and borrow an automobile.” She looked out the window. “We’ll drive until the sky is blue. Your father will be happy like before. Won’t it be wonderful, Hazel?”

I took her hand. “Yes, it will.”

The night before I left for Dogwood, I crept barefoot to their
bedroom door as I’d done so often as a child, listening to voices filtered through oak. “It’s so far,” my mother was saying. “The other side of Pennsylvania.”

“Katarina, we came from the other side of the ocean.”

“But we had each other. She has nobody.”

“You know, we
could
have stayed in Heidelberg. It’s more beautiful than Pittsburgh. All our people were there, and I had work. Why did we come here?”

“Because—we wanted to. We were young. We wanted a place of our own.”

“Exactly, we wanted to. Hazel’s young. She wants a place of her own. At least she’ll be safe.” The bed creaked. “There’s no bombing in New Jersey.”

“Oh, Johannes, don’t think about the war. It only makes you sick. Come, come close.”

I slipped back to my room, where my suitcase stood in a patch of moonlight. I had some money, clothes to be decently dressed for work if I found it, a few drawings, and three of my father’s tins. Besides these things, I’d packed the hope to untangle the lines of hurt and healing that ran through Margit and into me.

CHAPTER 9

There Was No Dream

A
stubby conductor recommended a boardinghouse in Dogwood and warned me when the stop was coming. The town was larger than Galway, a ruffle of shops and homes set in modest hills. I’d expected worse from Margit’s description. The roads were freshly paved; a new brick school and public library stood near the station. Well-dressed townspeople bustled by. Newsboys hawked headlines of baseball, state scandals, and local taxes. Nothing here spoke of war. Windows sparkled. The air was sweet and clear. Nobody looked at me oddly. Perhaps these people were accustomed to strangers. Why couldn’t Margit have been happy here?

As I soon discovered, the owner of the boardinghouse was the train conductor’s sister, but Twin Oaks was clean, comfortable, and modestly priced. A brisk young Italian maid who spoke bits of English showed me to a room. She couldn’t have been in Dogwood long; she’d know nothing about Margit.

I washed my face and hands, brushed travel dust from my clothes, and took a walk down Main Street. A sign on Henderson’s Drug Store announced its founding in 1895. The tinted photograph in the window
showed a handsome, beaming man and guarded young woman framed by bunting on what was surely opening day. Inside, an older version of this woman, more rounded and at ease, was busy dusting shelves.

“Mrs. Henderson?”

“Yes. May I help you?” The dusting never stopped.

My mission seemed so absurd that I could scarcely keep from bolting back to the station for the next train west. Mrs. Henderson waited, dusting more slowly as I composed myself to ask: “I’m wondering if you knew a Margit Brandt. She lived in Dogwood about twenty years ago.” The puffed face hardened.

“Yes, I knew her. Why?” Mrs. Henderson glanced into the back room, where a still-handsome gray-haired man stocking shelves must be the proud owner in the photograph. Perhaps his was also one of the flitting names in Margit’s letters. Perhaps she caused Mrs. Henderson’s strained and wary look in the photograph.

“Margit had a child named Hilde. My name is Hazel Renner now, but I was that child.” The duster stopped as she studied my face and body. I added quickly: “My father was from Germany, someone she worked with.”

Mrs. Henderson’s voice dropped to a whisper. “Why did you come here? Everything’s good now.” Stepping back, I bumped a table. Glass rattled wildly. Could trouble start so soon?

“I just wanted to learn a little more about my mother, that’s all.”

“Like what?”

“Well, she went to New York. Do you know why?”

“No. She left and nobody heard from her again.”
Good riddance,
the tone said. “She probably didn’t like the city. She didn’t like anything for long. She was beautiful and charming, but she made trouble for other people.”

“I’m sorry.”

She studied me again, perhaps gauging how much of Margit’s bad blood had passed on. Tante Elise could be right that some things are better left unexamined. I was about to leave when Mrs. Henderson put aside the duster. “Well, it wasn’t your fault how she was. We heard Margit gave you away.”

“Yes, to her sister and her husband. They raised me in Pittsburgh.”

“You were a nice little girl,” she conceded, straightening a pyramid of bath salts. “Anna was heartbroken when you left. I’m sorry, Miss Renner, I shouldn’t talk badly about your mother. But it looks like you found a good home.”

“I did. Who’s Anna?”

“She worked with Margit at the castle.”

I jumped.
Men in scarlet. A banquet hall.

“What castle?”

“Don’t you know?” Did every little New Jersey town have a castle? “Baron Georg von Richthofen owns it. We just call him Baron. It doesn’t sound so German.”

“Why would a baron come to Dogwood?”

Mrs. Henderson bristled. “Why not? It’s beautiful.”

“Yes, I’m sure, but why build a castle?”

She shrugged. “He wanted to and could. They say he had family troubles back there. He pays a lot of salaries in town, one way or the other. And better a castle than a dirty factory, right?”

“I agree, but Margit didn’t like living in a castle?”

“Not if she had to clean it. Or act decent with the help.” The swath of damage had been wide. Where could reparations begin?

“Ginny, look at this tonic.” I spun to face Mr. Henderson. “Oh, excuse me, miss.” The eyes widened.

“This is Hazel Renner,” I heard behind me. “She was Hilde Brandt.
Her
daughter.”

“Just visiting,” I said quickly.

“Well, enjoy your visit, Miss Renner.” He seemed about to say more, but didn’t, moving toward his wife and holding out a blue bottle. “Did we order this tonic?”

I backed away. “Thank you for your help, Mrs. Henderson. Could you just tell me where the castle is?”

“Walk north on Main. When you see towers on your right, take the next street to a big iron gate.”

“Thank you.”

“Good-bye, Miss Renner,” they chorused, huddled tightly over the bottle. As I hurried north, older men passing on the sidewalks glanced at me. Did my face recall former pleasures, pains, or broken promises? Margit was my age when she trounced Dogwood’s peace. She’d had me carelessly and thrown me away as she threw away men like broken toys. Was there so much difference between us? Many in Galway might be thinking now:
Good riddance to that woman.
I’d been extraordinary as was Margit, in her way. Now my healing course was to become ordinary. How strange that my journey would begin in a castle.

Even forewarned, I gasped at the sight of turreted stone towers after blocks of tidy shops and wooden houses. I walked faster, finally reaching an enormous width of wrought iron. Elaborately fretted letters spelled out
Mein Königsberg
. My Königsberg. Surely this was the castle gate, yet the juncture of two halves was barely visible. Did the inmates never leave? Margit must have felt imprisoned. I peered down a drive framed by meticulously clipped evergreens to an arched stone entryway. The castle was gracefully proportioned, with decks of high, diamond-paned windows. Pittsburgh boasted mansions built by steel, coal, and railroad barons whose gaudy excess announced: “See what new money buys!” But these walls could have stood for
centuries. A Grimm Brothers’ tale might be set here. Yet, wasn’t the entry arch familiar? Yes, it was in Margit’s sketches, and this cobbled drive as well, framed by these trees, much smaller when she drew them.

My face was pressed to the gate when a wolf bounded at me, snarling. I jumped back, fell, and scrambled to my feet again. Such a beast might crack iron bars like old bread. A man’s voice shouted: “Lilli, down. Sit!” As if bewitched, it sat, great eyes pinning me in place. The man appeared from between the evergreens, an ordinary-seeming American, despite his astonishing powers. He had neat work clothes, an open, ruddy face, and tweed cap barely restraining black curls. Just a man. “Do you have business at Mein Königsberg, miss?” Anyone could be cordial with a tamed wolf at his feet.

“I’m looking for—” What, exactly, was I looking for? “My name is Hazel Renner. I live in Pittsburgh. I came here because my mother, Margit Brandt—”

The wide face broke open, beaming. “Hilde! Sorry,
Hazel
. You came back! How wonderful.” He fumbled with the lock. “Do you remember me? I’m Tom Jamison. I was ten when you left. I carried you around.”

“In a garden?”

“Yes, yes, in the rose garden and here, on this path.”

“I’m sorry. I only remember being carried.”

“Never mind. It was a long time ago. But come in, come in.” The great gate opened wide enough for a carriage. I didn’t move.

“The wolf,” I reminded him.

“The— Oh, you mean Lilli? She’s a German shepherd. You’ve never seen one? It’s a new breed of working dog,” he explained proudly. “There
is
a bit of wolf bred in for strength and intelligence. They’re wonderful animals. Look: Lilli. Friend. Up.” She scrambled to her feet, long tail wagging. “Hazel, come closer and hold out your hand.
She’s perfectly tame.” Under his spell, I inched forward. The tail never stopped as she sniffed me solemnly. “You can pet her. Steady, Lilli.” She froze. My palm hovered over the head. When it didn’t flinch, I touched the dark velvet between silky ears with my fingertips and moved down the coarser pelt of neck, marveling at my courage. “See? She likes you.”

“How do you know?”

“From her stance. Don’t you have a dog?”

“No. I never even touched one before.”

“You never— Really? Ever? Well, that’s so—
extraordinary.
” Tom’s somber shock, the great tail waving like a flag, my hand half hidden in fur, all this made us laugh. Suddenly, incredibly, I was at ease with this man and his wolf-dog. “So you live in Pittsburgh?”

“Yes, and you live in a castle?”

“I’m the head gardener, driver, carpenter, and picture framer. The baron keeps me busy.”

“You were born here?”

“No. I wasn’t.” The answer seemed to guard a private pain, a door shut tight. He threw a bent stick into a pile of branches. “Fetch, Lilli.” She leapt away and began diligently searching the pile. “She’ll find it. Come, I’ll show you the rose garden, although nothing’s blooming now, of course.” Lilli bounded back with the same bent stick. “Good girl. Drop it.” She did. “Heel.” She flanked him, precisely matching her pace with his. As we walked, I briefly explained how I’d discovered that my “parents” were in fact my aunt and uncle and described my plan to learn what I could of Margit. “And then get a job until the war ends. After that, I’ll go to Paris,” I finished with a flourish. There: a plan fit for a castle. Did it sound in any way credible?

“Of course.” In those two syllables, a wedge of warmth slipped through the late winter chill. “So here we are: rose garden, much
bigger now than when you left. Over there, the kitchen garden, cutting garden, orchard, and meadow. You should see them in springtime.” I had, in Margit’s sketches.

And inside, would I find the mirrors, banquet hall, and men in scarlet, proof that my memories were no dreams? Could I also find here some redeeming quality of my mother? We reached the grand entry, but now Tom stopped, looked up to a tightly curtained window, and shook his head. “The baron’s having one of his headaches. They last for days. He stays in the dark and receives nobody. I’m sorry, Hazel, but I can’t take you inside without his permission.” He truly seemed sorry.